#i think this would be the cheapest option but also one of the more fun.

[pedgito]

hi! i have a small prompt request!

what if eddie left something that’s for hellfire (like a notebook or one of his advanced dnd folders) and the reader (a cheerleader getting off of practice) sees it and decides to walk to his place to give it back

it starts raining and once they get there, wanye offers them a shower so they don’t get sick and to dry their clothes

long story short, eddie walks in on them after their shower and gets all flustered after staring for a while

maybe a small perv eddie BUT ALL FLUFF WITH FEELINGS SHOWN AT THE END

author’s note: this was supposed to be quick but i got carried away lol, i hope it’s okay!

cw: 18+ (minors dni) slight perv!eddie, reader is good at calling eddie’s bluffs, acquaintances to friends (w possible benefits), unrequited crushes, cheerleader!reader, mentions of drug use, kissing/teasing, lmk if i missed anything!

word count: 3.8k

Eddie was the least scariest person you knew, no matter how much people swore the opposite. Truthfully, you didn’t even know him very well—aside from the occasional discreet meet-up on the outskirts of school grounds, which after a few times eventually turned into meeting up with Eddie at his house, or allowing him to drive you, the latter being the more frequent. To be fair, most of what you relationship consisted of was a tolerance for the other. If he wasn’t the cheapest and easily accessible option for drugs, you wouldn’t have batted an eye—regardless of how cute he may have been.

And you’re not blind, you can see it. Eddie’s always been attractive, from his short buzzcut in grade school to his long, tousled curls he sported now, hiding his fit physique behind too many layers and always overcompensating with his over the top personality—not that you minded it, but it definitely rubbed people the wrong way.

Either way, he shafts you earlier in the day when you ask to meet up with him, going on and on about his stupid club, you didn’t understand any of it. It seemed way too serious for a game that consisted of plastic dice and way too much math for something that was supposed to be fun. He’s also flustered more than usual, slightly all over the place—and when his spiral notebook falls from his bag at the ring of the final bell dismissing you for the day, he doesn’t hear you calling after him, already long gone.

If it weren’t for the strict practice schedule Chrissy liked to keep, you would have ran straight to the theater room and returned Eddie’s belongings, not even thinking twice about it—and sure, his friends would probably tease him about some like you, a cheerleader, coming by to talk to him. But, Eddie had never explicitly stated his dislike for anyone really, not even Jason, who hounded him relentlessly for just breathing.

The next best option is to catch him after, knowing his club meetings probably stretched into the late hours of the evening, but the doors to the building are already looked when you arrive there—shaking and pounding on the door is no help either, your shoulders slumping in defeat.

It was just a notebook and it could wait until the next day, but from personal experience, it would have driven you crazy knowing someone had your belongings in their possession without you realizing —and besides, you could still buy from Eddie that way, not giving him a chance to weasel out that easily.

The walk isn’t bad at first either, the air is warm and calm, the passing cars providing enough light on your walk that it isn’t so terrifying—as often as your parents warned you about going out alone, you couldn’t understand why you were so easily throwing caution to the window now. But with Eddie, it seemed like a regular theme.

A bad boy who supposedly dabbled in satanic worshiping and sold fairly good weed, how could you pass that up? It was everything that everyone told you to steer clear of. It didn’t help that Eddie was also insanely kind to you, never asking prying questions or judging you—it made him even more attainable in your eyes. But alas, you couldn’t ever justify any of it to him, not without making an embarrassment of yourself if he rejected you.

But the rain hits about five minutes from Eddie’s house and the trail of trees are doing nothing to aid as cover from the storm. Your pace picks up, shoes squeaking against the pavement until you were nearly running, racing down the trail that led to the small cul de sac of trailers, knocking on Eddie’s door with a ferocity that could be mistaken for an intruder.

It’s much too late to turn back when Eddie’s uncle answers the door instead of him, turning quickly to realize that Eddie wasn’t even home, his van not parked in the driveway like it usually was.

Wayne has a crease in his brow, unlit cigarettes tucked between his lips as if he was planning to go for a smoke. His face softens at the sight of you, hair soaked over your shoulders and your practice clothes sticking to your skin—a thin top and an even thinner pair of shorts that had you shivering despite the humid, end of summer heat.

“Hey, kid—you didn’t get a ride with my nephew?” Wayne asks through the screen door.

You squint, rain still trickling down your face, though it’s slightly lighter now.

“Yeah, he uh—I needed to return something to him, he doesn’t know I’m here. I thought he would be home by now.” You explain, wiping your face weakly.

“Ah shit—just come inside, kid.” Wayne relents, opening the door. “I’m headed up to the plant but I’m sure he’ll be home soon—probably headed over to Rick’s for a bit.”

Reefer Rick was nothing but an anomaly in your mind, someone you always heard about but never saw. You only knew so much that Eddie received his drugs from him, but not much else—and frankly, you’d like to keep it that way.

“Are you sure?” You ask hesitantly, “I don’t want to intrude, sir.”

Wayne scoffs kindly at the endearment. He was a nice man, quiet more often than not, but he always meant well. He was still a stranger though, despite how often you saw him. If it weren’t for the familiarity you would’ve ran the other direction.

“Of course—you can clean up in the shower if you need to.” He says, motioning behind him with his thumb extended, “I’ll lock up behind me—and if Eddie doesn’t at least give you a ride home in this storm, I’ll give him hell come tomorrow morning.”

You smile warmly, nodding in response. “I think I’ll take you up on the offer,” You tell him, wanting nothing more than to be out of your wet clothes, “hopefully Eddie doesn’t mind lending me some clothes.”

“Can’t see why not.” He says, allowing you inside before slipping past you in silence, “I’ll see you around, kid.”

You smile politely, “You too, Mr. Munson.”

Again, another name he dislikes. But, you couldn’t help it. He understands you probably came from a family that stuck with the propers and addressed people more formally—it’s just another reminder that Eddie didn’t grow up like everyone else. Like a normal family.

When the door is shut and locked, the silence hits you hard. Aside from the gentle hum of electricity running throughout the trailer and the buzz of the lights, it was eerie. It made you miss Eddie’s blaring music that he liked to play in his bedroom, surely annoying every neighbor within a five mile stretch.

You heave a heavy sigh and trek toward the back of the trailer, remaining cautious about the water dripping from you—having toed your shoes off at the door to help with that. The bathroom is tiny, barely big enough to fit the necessities, a stand up shower in the place of what would normally be a bathtub, but you’re not one to complain. You fiddle with the faucet handle for a while, adjusting it until the water ran hot and swiped the curtain close to trap in the heat.

Your clothes fell to the floor in a wet mess, realizing much too late that you didn’t have anything of yours to put on—clothes were obvious, but the problem lies within your soaked bra and underwear. It was a problem you could deal with later, naked body shivering in the stagnant air. You slip into the shower quickly, letting out an audible sigh as the heat hits your body and suddenly everything is fixed.

It was a wasted trip to Rick’s unfortunately, he was low on his stash, sending Eddie home empty handed for the weekend.

The stress of the day was enough to knock Eddie on his ass the second he stepped inside the trailer—not to mention having lost his D&D notebook earlier in the day and having nothing for Hellfire that night, scribbling most of it down from memory in an attempt to make do. His keys clatter against the counter, palm rubbing over his face in exhaustion as he slips his shoes off, stumbling over another pair in the process.

And unless Wayne had decided to take a night off and not give him a warning ahead of time, he might regret trailing any further inside the trailer—and that’s when it dawns on Eddie, the shower running in the background.

He takes it all in—shoes, shower, his eyes wander further, scanning for anything else—his eyes land on a bag, soaked and sitting on the kitchen floor, his notebook peeking out of the unzipped zipper.

“What the fuck?” He mumbles to himself, snatching the backpack up into his hands. He pulls the notebook out and tosses it aside, thankfully it had been unscathed from the rain.

But, he could spot this bag anywhere. He saw it every day, stared at it in the back of his English class when he was bored out of his goddamn mind.

So, unless his conclusion was more fucked than what was probably going on, you had to be somewhere inside his trailer—and with narrowing it down, that probably meant the shower. He glanced at the clock, knowing that Wayne had to be gone; there was no way in hell he was taking a day off unless he was sick and bed-ridden.

He hears the faucet turn off from where he’s standing, dropping the bag on the counter. He can’t decide if he should approach or stay back, but it’s too late to decide before you’re stepping out of the bathroom, towel wrapped tightly around your body, using another to squeeze out the extra water from your hair.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Eddie’s voice travels, a smirk growing on his face, “but what the hell are you doing in my trailer, alone?”

You panic, having not expected him to be standing in the kitchen when you stepped, hoping you had enough time to shower and get dressed—but unfortunately, this was your reality.

“Jesus, Eddie.” You exclaim, palm pressed over your chest to calm your rapidly beating heart. You toss the towel on the floor with your soaked clothes, turning to him. “I—your notebook, you left it in class.”

“What?” Eddie asks dumbfounded.

“Your notebook—you left it.” You explain slower, taking a few steps into the living room and passing a small distance toward the kitchen, poised on the opposite side of the counter where Eddie was standing. “I figured it was important so I wanted to get it back to you.”

“Did you look inside it?” Eddie presses, but it wasn’t like you didn’t already know his nerdy tendencies. “And you couldn’t have waited?”

“No—and no.” You tell him, “I tried giving it to you after practice but the building was locked and I needed to buy off you, so I figured two birds, one stone, you know?”

You step back slightly and Eddie’s eyes follow—you weren’t naive, he was checking you out. You didn’t mind though, despite how awkward the situation was.

“Your uncle let me inside,” You explain, “I walked here and it started pouring, my clothes are soaking wet.”

“And that’s my problem?” Eddie asks meanly, though it comes off as more teasing than anything. Eddie couldn’t be mean to you if he tried.

“Yes,” You challenge, “I need to borrow some clothes.”

Eddie laughs slightly, fingers tapping against the countertop quietly, rings clanking against the surface. His tongue pokes at his cheek, eyes traveling your mostly bare figure, “Fine, follow me.”

You roll your eyes in annoyance, following closely behind.

“I would have taken them regardless.” You retort quietly and Eddie howls a laugh over his shoulder.

“Sweetheart, I was messing with you.” Eddie responds smugly, “What kind of guy do you take me for?”

“I don’t take you for anything,” You tell him honestly, “I know what people say about you but what does that matter?”

The words hit Eddie deeper than he anticipates, glaring at the floor as he stops at the threshold of his room, seeing you follow behind in the mirror stretching the expanse of his wall. He’s suddenly dry in the mouth and at a loss for words, realizing the gravity of the situation—even if it wasn’t that big of a deal.

A naked girl in his house, his bedroom—one that he couldn’t help but have a crush on despite every sign telling him he shouldn’t, and she didn’t hate him. Karma had a hell of a way of working its magic and he couldn’t trust this for a second. So, despite his immediate reaction to be flustered and searching for the right words, he slips the mask back on.

“Maybe it’s true,” He shrugs, raising his arm up to let you slip under, walking in front of him and toward his dresser, “top is shirts, bottom is pants—“

You grab a shirt wordlessly, one of Eddie’s Hellfire shirts. He had a few, something that could be noted with a quick glance in his drawer, before you’re pulling out an old pair of cotton sweatpants from the next drawer, tossing them on the bed.

“—is that all,” Eddie asks curiously, leaning against the doorframe, “just a shirt and pants?”

“Everything was soaked, Eddie.” You stressed, eyes glaring at him. “Do you mind?”

“No.” He grins devilishly, not bothering to turn away.

There was no way you were letting him get away with this.

“Fine.” You respond with a shrug, calling his bluff.

You drop the towel without warning and Eddie visibly tenses, only catching the side of your breasts as you turn to slip the shirt over your head, ass on full display.

Eddie’s never been so intimidated in his life. But, he wasn’t giving in that easily.

You pull the sweatpants over your hips and turn to him, eyebrow cocked up intimidatingly. “Enjoy yourself?”

Eddie takes a careful glance at you, stopping on his shirt.

“Actually—do you mind picking something else?” Eddie asks, finger coming up to tug at the sleeve, “This is one of my favorites.”

Your shoulders slump, eyes boring into his, the corners of his lips crinkling as he grinned. “You’re kidding?”

“Dead serious.” He answers quickly.

You slip the shirt off in one go, not giving him much of a chance to enjoy the view, hurling the material at his face.

“Hey,” His voice is muffled, grabbing the shirt out of annoyance and balling it up, tossing it somewhere in his room—you couldn’t be bothered to care, pulling the new shirt over your head, “—look, I’m sorry.”

“For?” You ask, arms crossing over your chest as you look at him. “Being annoying? Obnoxious, irritating—“

“Okay, okay—“ Eddie says with a laugh, hoping it stops your relentless attempt to belittle him. “I was joking, I didn’t think you’d, you know…”

“So, you didn’t want me to strip naked in front of you?” You ask teasingly, returning that bite of mean right back at him. “Damn, that sucks.”

You attempt to shove past him, trying to hurry up the process and get out of there, feeling that if you stayed any longer you would just embarrass yourself further.

You never make it past Eddie, his hand pressed flat against your stomach in an effort to stop you. You glance down at his hand for a moment too long and Eddie thinks that is the overstep—not everything that happened just a few seconds prior.

“Sorry,” He says quickly, “I just—I was going to tell you that I don’t have anything to sell. I’m out until next week. But, I can give you a ride home, if you need it.”

“Unless you want me sleeping here, yeah.” You retort flippantly.

Eddie doesn’t respond, letting you shove past and gathering your things, shoes still soaked ridiculously. You sigh, squatting down by the door to turn your shoes upside down, the water dripping from the laces and creating a puddle.

Eddie watches from a few feet away, hip leaning against the counter, “I don’t mind—if you want to sleep here.”

“I just need a few hours, maybe two if I can dry them out somehow.”

And truthfully, the easier option would be to sleep it off and deal with it tomorrow, the rain back to its original heavy downpour. The thunder crackles ominously and Eddie smiles slightly, less condescending and more welcoming.

“I didn’t say thank you for bringing that all the way here,” Eddie notes, “so, thank you.”

“You don’t have to—“

“You could’ve just left it but you didn’t.” Eddie shrugs, nodding toward the couch wordlessly. You’re hesitant at first, knowing that you and Eddie didn’t do these things. You didn’t talk, not really—and you definitely didn’t hang out. Social cliques handled that well enough.

“Well, if it was me I would hope that someone would return the favor.” You tell him honestly, taking a seat on the opposite end of the couch, bare feet pressed into the cushion separating you both.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” Eddie tells you randomly, idle hand pulling at the loose threads on the arm of the couch.

“You didn’t.” You smile, shrugging nonchalantly. “Trust me, you would know.”

“Good.” Eddie smiles to himself. “Good.”

You snort softly, “So, can I ask what’s in the notebook?”

“Do you really want to know?” Eddie asks hesitantly.

“Yeah,” You nod, grinning at him, “besides, what else are we supposed to do all night?”

Eddie’s never flushed so red, ears burning with embarrassment. You laugh quietly at his inability to hide his bashfulness, the chain connected to his pants jingling as he walked, fetching the notebook from its place.

“Uh, it’s kinda confusing,” Eddie admits, taking a closer seat beside you, “so it would probably make no sense even if I tried to explain it.”

You reposition your feet under you, sitting on your heels. Eddie’s book is filled with countless scribblings and drawings, not a single page blank as he lets you flip through slowly, taking in the detail Eddie puts into his art.

“Eddie, this is really good.” You tell him honestly, running your finger along the lines of a rather menacing figure, deathly and sickening looking, covered in a hooded cape. “I didn’t know you could draw like this.”

“It’s not—“ Eddie starts uneasily, gearing to say something self-deprecating.

“Shut up,” You tell him quickly, “don’t even say it.”

Eddie laughs at that, your face serious despite the smile that breaks out on his face. He’s never taken a compliment in his life, but for some reason, he listens.

“Thanks.” He tells you softly, closing the book and placing it on the table placed in front of the couch.

Admittedly, you weren’t sure what to expect from Eddie. He’s always been a mystery to you, aside from the things people said about him.

“Why do you let people talk about you the way they do?” You ask curiously, head tilted to rest against the couch.

“Why disprove what’s true,” Eddie shrugs, “that reminds me, I’ve got a sacrifice to attend later tonight—“

“Eddie,” You linger on his name, eyeing him pointedly, “I’m serious.”

He shrugs wordlessly, twisting his rings absentmindedly, “I can’t be bothered to give a shit what people think about me.”

You’re silent, Eddie’s gaze downturned toward the floor.

“Aren’t you breaking all types of rules by talking to me—I thought you cheerleaders only associated with Jason and his band of assholes?”

You snort in amusement, shoving Eddie gently with your foot.

“Is that all you take me for?” You ask teasingly, “A cheerleader?”

Eddie shrugs, he couldn’t explain his attraction toward you—earlier actions aside, he’s always been intrigued by you. The act of wanting what he knew he couldn’t have.

And you can’t tell if Eddie is trying to act coy, or he’s just shy—you’d never take him for the type, but sitting here with him now his personality had taken a quick turn. His usual hard exterior was a lot softer around the edges. Eddie glanced at you sparingly, pulling at the frayed material of his ripped jeans.

“Come here.” You urge him suddenly, using the small ounce of courage you had in your body to take a chance, extending your hand for him to move closer.

Eddie’s apprehensive in a way, allowing himself to scoot as close as possible, your legs extending over his lap.

“Answer the question, Eddie.” You order him softly, “Am I just some cheerleader to you? Is that why you like me?”

His stomach is in his throat, staring you down with comically wide eyes, his bangs curtaining over his forehead messily. Eddie shakes his head wordlessly.

“So you do?” You ask with a faint smugness, “Like me?”

“Am I that obvious?.” Eddie asks with a chuckle.

You shake your head, “No, actually—but that shit you pulled earlier…kinda gave you away.”

“You didn’t seem to have a problem with it either.” He counters, fingers pressing into the soft cotton of his sweatpants on your body, “Now look who’s sitting here in my clothes.”

“Because I was soaked.” You defend.

“After walking five minutes in the rain just to return my notebook.” Eddie points out, “That you could’ve returned to me on Monday—yet, here you are.”

The tension is thick, Eddie’s plush lips on full display as his jaw tensed. Your fingers wander, the guitar pick around his neck tickling your palm as you examine it, speaking idly.

“What a genius,” You snark playfully, “Say, what’s your policy on kissing customers?”

“Hard no,” Eddie smiles, lying through his teeth, “why?”

“Damn.” You curse, eyes flicking up towards him. He’s got a heat behind his gaze, the warmness of his brown eyes comforting you, oddly enough. “That’s too bad.”

“But, I think I can make an exception.” Eddie adds, the fingers that trailed down your leg now sneaking up under your chin, tilting your face up slightly. “Right?”

“It’s only fair,” You agree, “seeing as I came all this way for nothing.”

You both knew it was a lie. Regardless, you would’ve ended up in this situation at some point.

“Come here.” Eddie says patronizingly, teasing you for earlier.

You pull forward slowly, Eddie’s lips barely grazing yours as his thumb runs along your chin, tugging at your bottom lip slightly to part them, his lips pressing against them gently. You press forward eagerly, nearly shifting into Eddie’s lap, but he’s quick to stop you.

“Slow,” He stresses, pulling back to look at you, half-lidded eyes gazing into yours, “we’ve got all night, right?”

You smile through a laugh, nodding slowly in response.

“All night,” You confirm, “it seems you’ve already got a few ideas to keep us busy.”

“I’ve got plenty.” Eddie says lowly, leaning forward to run his tongue against your top lip teasingly, “if you’re up for it.”

“Sounds like a challenge,” You breathe out against his mouth, “and I’m pretty competitive, so—“

“Perfect.” Eddie grins with an edge that you can’t decipher, gripping your chin between his fingers to pull you even closer, “So am I.”

Please consider a reblog if you enjoyed this fic! It’s makes a huge difference. ♡

[headspace-hotel]

Thinking of your post on the problems of veganism as a movement vs veganism as a lifestyle choice/one technique amongst many, that also applys super well to my issues with degrowth (And anticonsumerism as well) as a movement vs degrowth as one technique amongst many for dealing with the hydra-crisis of overproduction/resource overuse/destroying people and places for resources.

Like, in particular as an autistic person the continual recurring insistence that we need to just "change our desires" creeps me out. As someone who's difficulties were dismissed as just "having a bad attitude" and who's interests were so often dismissed as a waste of time instead of preparing for a job in the "real world" IDK if they truly understand the full horrifying implications of that line of thought.

So here's the thing with the concept of "overconsumption"

I had to do this whole project on overconsumption in my Anthropology class where I compared my consumption habits to those of someone 2 generations older, the prof clearly had in mind that we would discover a particular result that I did not end up finding.

I had to watch this documentary called "Affluenza" which was all about how Americans consume too much and they shop and buy things for fun and it's killing the planet, and it kept making these statements like "The average american does X..." and "X" would be something insane that I've never dreamed of doing.

Now I technically grew up below the poverty line, we were always financially insecure and struggling to pay bills and there was never any extra money lying around.

But my upbringing felt average, even privileged. We had a house instead of a trailer on cinder blocks, we had food and clothes. Compared to the upbringing of my mom and virtually everyone she knew growing up, we lived in fabulous luxury.

And the "overconsumption" lesson was bizarre to me because it brought up things like "going shopping for fun once a week" and "owning 20+ pairs of shoes" as if they were normal. I wear my clothes until they're unwearable and shop for clothes like once a year, and my mom has half as many clothes as I do. She feels guilty buying anything for herself and HATES shopping.

It feels like the dominant resources on living an eco friendly lifestyle presume that we have far more agency in what we buy and use than we actually do, instead of being stuck with the cheapest or closest available thing, and that our lives are full of extraneous, non-essential "consumption."

That class brought up the idea of "conspicuous consumption" a lot, or buying things to obtain social status instead of for their concrete utility. The way "conspicuous consumption" was addressed in the class was not very immediately relatable to me—I never had the option of buying clothes just to appear "with it" socially. My parents couldn't buy an extra car to fit the aesthetic of the American dream—we had enough trouble keeping the one we had running. The "conspicuous consumption" that class addressed was just not available to me.

However, I don't think conspicuous consumption is endemic to stable members of a certain socioeconomic status, because consumption is partially driven by the trauma of poverty. People who grew up poor will buy you more Christmas gifts than you can store or use, because they want to spare you the shame they experienced. Their brains are molded around the trauma of not having enough, and giving you enough is their way of keeping you safe.

Conspicuous consumption as a habit is pushed on you if your ancestors were shaped by this trauma. It is a misrepresentation to think of it as driven by pride, because your ability to perform the behaviors and mimic the appearances of a higher socioeconomic status has a concrete effect on how people treat you.

I know J.D. Vance is a nutjob now and Hillbilly Elegy was...not great (I'm more appalachian than you bitch, and I'm not even appalachian!) but the one thing that book got incredibly right was the idea of "social capital" and the way access to financial security and wealth gives you social capital. This is the main thing the current understanding of "conspicuous consumption" gets wrong—the need to escape the appearance and behaviors of poverty is seen as vain and self-indulgent, when it's a survival mechanism and it's something you're expected to engage in to gain opportunities and respect.

Poverty is humiliating. People with money never think about the fact that they have money. They think of themselves as average, if they think of themselves in terms of socioeconomic status at all. Being poor ends up embedded in the grooves and folds of your brain.

I remember when I was about 12, I gave my friend an informal tour of our house the first time she came over, showing her every room. I realized later that this wasn't exactly a normal behavior—I had done it because my mom did the same thing when she brought her friend over, and my mom had done it because it was a way of saying look, I survived. Look, I have a place to live to call my own, isn't this nice?

At its worst, anti-consumerism just reinforces the myth that your consumption is purely a matter of personal choice. And unfortunately when the conversation is ruled by the privileged, this idea will appear substantiated—because rich people can choose the aesthetics of poverty without concretely affecting the way the world treats them. A rich person can choose to live in a "tiny house" but they will never be "trailer trash."

Anti-consumerism revolves around ideas that are almost irreparably tainted by the mythology of an unequal society. Rich people possess and control the aesthetic of restraint and frugality, allowing them to playact living a Simple Life where they live in a tiny minimalist cottage and eat Healthy Vegan Oat Gruel, while McDonalds is the emblem of American excess. It is poor people's behaviors and habits that exemplify excess and greed.

Anti-consumerism isn't going to change anything until it openly confronts the fact that poverty is traumatic and consumption patterns often arise from poverty survival mechanisms.

[lovemari]

IMPORTANT: Hello! My old account, Lovemari, got deleted. Therefore, I had to make a new one. I'm honestly pretty upset about this so I'll take some time to recover! Thankfully, all my posts are saved as I write them in google docs before posting. Please like and reblog so I can reach my old followers and potentially new ones!

Wanderer - His Mission

Reminder: I'm not an experienced writer so construction criticism is always welcome! Also, I write for fun. I just wanted to share my work around the world!

Wanderer was like a dog protecting his owner. Sitting high up in that tree, eavesdropping on your conversation with the students from the Sumeru Akademiya. He was almost like a hawk, about to pounce on his prey at any given moment.

That was the mission he offered to do. When Nahida mentioned that you're being hunted by someone anonymous, Wanderer immediately offered to watch over you. He also wanted to see you more, which, of course, he didn't admit to Nahida.

Wanderer groaned. He had the urge to talk to you. At the same time, he was somewhat uneasy about it. After all, if he was going to hit up a conversation with you, it would mean he's letting his guard down.

The students waved goodbye as they walked off, leaving you alone and vulnerable. Anything could happen and Wanderer was ready for the worst.

That was, until you looked at him, “Don't think I didn't notice you, silly.” You chuckled. Wanderer smirked, “At least you're aware.” You raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything. Wanderer flew down to your level and extended his arm to you, “C'mon, grab my hand. I'm taking you to dinner.” You were getting suspicious but it's not like you couldn't say no to food. Besides, Wanderer knows the best places to grab a bite.

Wanderer grinned, “We're here.” He announced. It was a place you didn't recognize. Though, judging by the clothes of the guests, it must've been a place for the more wealthy part of Sumeru. You backed away, “...Wanderer? I think this place is a little above me.” You fretted. You weren't really used to being in high end places.

Wanderer gave you a soft smile, something that was rare for him to do, “Don't be like this. If I were you, I'd take this opportunity.” He encouraged you. With those words, you went to the table you've been assigned to and grabbed the menu.

Meanwhile, Wanderer was looking everywhere. He knew this anonymous person would be here. He stopped his head when he saw someone staring at you.

Wanderer slowly got up and snuck behind them. Shocked, he saw this person using his Kamera to take photos of you?! Wanderer hissed, “I've found you.” He confronted. The man quickly jumped, too nervous to say anything.

Wanderer gives him his famous death state, “Why are you taking photos of them?” He snarled. The man backed away, “I-I love them!” He admitted. Wanderer was disgusted, for sure, “So you take photos of them?!” He snapped. The man nodded his head.

Meanwhile, on your side, you were looking at the menu. You bit your nail, trying to decide what was the cheapest option. You didn't want Wanderer to spend too much mora on you.

You looked around, hoping for Wanderer to show himself. He said he “had to do something” and that he needed “a few minutes”.

You heard a smug voice, “I'm back.” You let out a sigh of relief, it was Wanderer, “You’re here. I thought you ditched me.” Wanderer only gave you a chill look, “Me? Never. Now, let's get out food. You must be pretty hungry.”

Wanderer looked proud, “Nahida. I finished the task.” Nahida clapped her hands, “Thank you. I'm glad they're safe now.” Wanderer agreed, “Yeah. Me too.” Nahida gave him a little smirk, “So~ How did your date go?” Wanderer's calm demeanor went to a little shock, “Tch..It wasn't a date.” He assured Nahida. She didn't say anything. After all, she wanted Wanderer to take his time to realize when it's time to confess to you.

[redmyeyes]

Hey Red! It's Tim's watch anon again! So, I think I've found it ahgairgairtgiart. I went down a hole and did a reverse image search on Google lmao. Prepare for some infodumping!

I really think it's either a Timex self-wind watch like this one https://cdn.watchcharts.com/listings/eb578671-c4fa-46e1-8d77-0ddfccfa4714.jpg or a Timex automatic watch like this one https://www.watchrepairtalk.com/uploads/monthly_2020_05/20200331_104721.jpg.f1f0b0e48234c80ce990c78230b6f557.jpg based on how the numbers alternate with the dashes. Apparently, the Timex watch was released in 1950. I'll bet Tim either treated himself to a new watch as a college graduation present in 1951/52 or it was gifted to him by his grandmother. Or his dad. (Unrelated, I really want to know about Tim's relationship with his dad.)

According to an article I found online (because I'm a fucking nerd), "the Timex watch would be the cheapest watch on the market, thanks to clever manufacturing practices and those wartime innovations". I really think this fits in with Tim's background because he wouldn't want some big, gaudy watch that looked good. He would want something that's practical and will last him a long time. (Also, the article says the Timex watch “takes a licking and keeps on ticking.” Is that not Tim?)

Also, in the article, which is here https://www.heddels.com/2019/08/cheap-tick-history-timex-watches/ in case you want to read it, there's a picture of a watch that's just like Hawk's. Imagine if they got to have matching watches if things had gone differently. Wow.

Which brings me to Hawk's watch! artgiartaoirtoart. Considering we saw it close up when he was practicing for the polygraph, it was an easy find. He had a Bulova military automatic watch https://www.ebay.com/itm/185976377415. Apparently, it wasn't the Most Expensive Brand™ but it supplied wristwatches as "official gear" to the American troops during World War 2. So. Specifically, it's called a "Hack" watch, which is a "reference to the hacking seconds function that permitted soldiers to synchronize their watches for coordinated timekeeping on missions." If that isn't Hawkins Fuller in a personal possession, I don't know what is.

Anyways, this was fun aortiotairotirot. I feel like I have a peace of mind knowing what their watches are? Lmao. I may need to go track down Tim's 70s watch. Watch this space.

anon, I LOVE YOU. and i am madly impressed with your research skills (coming from a research librarian, lol)

(re-posting the images here so everyone can see)

anon, you found it, it's perfect!!! and i love the self-wind option for tim, i think he would've loved the self-discipline of it. also really love the idea that it was a college graduation present. (something something tim wearing gifts from the people he loves). you're right though, it suits tim so well -- simple, elegant, functional, long-lasting.

and hawk's!

"Hawkins Fuller in a personal possession" lmao, you're so right. the costume/props department did such an amazing job on both of them!

-

"Imagine if they got to have matching watches if things had gone differently. Wow."

anon, this is my new headcanon. they lived every day of their lives together, and when tim's old watch finally broke, hawk persuaded Tim to let him buy them both matching new ones. more proof (without rings) that they belong to each other. <3

[renum-crimsonvale]

had a strange dream last night that i was playing a game on the DS that had heavy usage of the touch screen. the touch screen was how you drew out your spells, but it also measured your health- the more filled your touch screen was, the lower your health was. if you cast a spell, the entirety of the spell you drew gets filled in, and some have a minimum size requirement for drawing. if you were standing in a dangerous area, you'd occasionally get cuts across the touch screen, more frequently the more dangerous the area was. i remember i was exploring some kind of fleshy poison area and hadn't checked my lower screen in some time, looked down and it was nearly Full of cuts. i tried casting a spell i had remembered from earlier to escape but it didn't work because i couldn't remember it very well, since dream memory is Bad. but basically blood magic game for the DS. or maybe it was for 3ds, i am unsure.

also, whenever you encountered an enemy, you got into a 3d battle with it, in a completely seperate field. you had to avoid its attacks by running around while also hitting its weak spots to kill it, and while you could use spells midbattle, i never did that. the battles were too fun to do without the magic to do them with it. if you got hit, it caused an amount of lacerations across the bottom screen equal to the enemies' attack damage. there seemed to be a lot of worm-type enemies, with only the head and tail being vulnerable parts, and you had to kill both ends in order to beat them.

the overworld was also 3d, and you could rotate the camera using the shoulder buttons. i think there was no map, so you had to rely on your sense of direction (i got lost after obtaining the item i had gone to the poison flesh zone for) i do wish there was a map, because that would be immensely helpful for somebody as directionally challenged as me.

the main way of learning spells was going to Blood Magic School, which was partially optional aside from the beginning of the game, with the easiest, cheapest spells being taught in the mandatory part of going to school. you could use the school spells you hadn't learned yet, if you knew the pattern. in every area there was at least one Secret Scroll that taught you an ancient spell. these ancient spells were powerful, but they took up a third of your health or more, depending on which spell it was. you could not use ancient spells without the scroll.

i want to make a game like this become a reality, but i have no idea how to do anything when it comes to gamedev, sadly. If you'd like to take the idea, you're more than welcome to, but please credit me! and if you'd like to work on it with me, to have me assist with Story stuff, i would also enjoy that.

[novelmonger]

@thesteadfastnarnian expressed interest in hearing more about my clone sister story idea, so here it is! (And it really needs a title :/)

In the near future, cloning of human beings has become possible, though it's still prohibitively expensive. There are also lots of laws and regulations surrounding human cloning, so there won't be any billionaires cloning an army of themselves to take over the world or something :P

The most relevant restriction for our story is that you're only allowed to clone someone after that person has died (and there's a limited window of time after death in which to start the cloning process). When the clone has developed, it will take on the legal identity of the person who died. Basically, cloning is intended to be used to restore people who die prematurely and unexpectedly, like a reset button. For handwavey science reasons, it takes five years for the full cloning process to be completed, and you can choose to implant the clone with the person's memories/personality (may have limited effectiveness unless the brain was mapped while the person was alive), as well as choosing what age to have the clone be at the end of the cloning process.

The story I want to write involves a family with two girls, whose names I think I've decided are Lily and Rose. The sisters are ten years apart; Rose was a surprise, but a welcome one. The two sisters weren't particularly close, though they loved each other; Lily was used to being an only child at that point, and struggled a bit at first with suddenly being a big sister. But Rose was so cute, she won everybody's hearts. While the two sisters were never best friends or anything, since they were so far apart in age and thus had little in common, they still had fun times growing up.

Then came the accident. I haven't decided yet exactly what happened, except that it came out of nowhere and was over before anyone could come to grips with what happened. Something like Rose was walking home from school and got hit by a truck. Maybe Rose clung on for a few hours, just long enough for Lily to rush to the hospital from college, but then she died. She was ten years old.

Everyone was grieving, but her mother took it the hardest. This wasn't supposed to happen. Her baby had her whole life ahead of her, and it was snatched away. She refused to let that happen.

So she insisted that they clone Rose and start over again. Her husband tried to dissuade her, saying they needed to just let Rose go, but the mother would have none of it. They had such a short window of time to make the decision, and they were all hurting, so eventually the father agreed, and made the call.

Now, the family was well off (I'm thinking the dad is like...a dentist or something?), but not super rich or anything. In order to afford this, they had to cut as many corners as they possibly could. Instead of implanting the clone with Rose's memories and personality, which might not have worked anyway, they went with the lowest-cost blank slate option, where they give the clone a basic understanding of language and how to walk and that sort of thing, but beyond that nothing. Also, it's more complicated (and thus more expensive) to choose a specific age for the clone to be, so instead of having the clone be ten years old when they're done with her, they chose the cheapest option, which is to have the clone be five years old when the process is done. Additionally, the dad increased his hours at work and the mom (who had only done volunteer work up until then) got a job she doesn't like to help pay the bills. Lily dropped out of school, moved back home, and started working too.

And so the five-year wait begins. They all begin to process their shock and grief over losing Rose, and come to grips with the decision they made to make a clone. I haven't decided for sure yet, but I'm leaning towards them being a sort of nominally or casually Christian family - they go to church most Sundays, maybe the mom helps out at the church's soup kitchen or something, but otherwise their faith doesn't really affect their day-to-day life.

But maybe in the wake of this tragedy, they start going to church more often. Maybe they start reading the Bible more, searching for some kind of meaning in what's happened, some comfort they can lean on. The mom, at least, has a complete renewal of her faith. She realizes that she's been angry at God for taking away her daughter, and also sees how the whole situation is a wake-up call for all of them to stop just living for their own comfort, but to live for a greater purpose.

And so the mom realizes she was wrong to clone her dead daughter. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. She shouldn't have tried to cheat death. But they're a few years into the process already. They've been getting reports from the organization about how things are progressing smoothly. The mom arranges to go out to the place where they're making the clone, and see it for herself. She timidly asks, "What happens if I decide I don't want the clone after all?" And they explain calmly that, for a small cancellation fee, they can stop the process and inject certain chemicals into the tube where the clone is being made, which will break down the proteins of the developing body.

But when she looks at the half-formed fingers and toes of the barely human shape in the tube, all she can think is, "That's my daughter. It might not be Rose, but that's my daughter." So she has them continue to the end.

And only now are we getting to the beginning of the actual story! XD Exactly five years after Rose died, they finally bring the little clone home. She looks exactly like Rose did at five years old, but she acts and talks kind of like a robot - flat, no emotion, able to talk and understand what they're saying, but without the charming little lisps and kid-talk you'd expect from a five-year-old. Her diction is perfect, by the book. And she doesn't immediately know what things are just by looking at them; she might try to bite into a red ball because she knows that an apple is something round and red that you can eat. So she has a lot to learn about the world.

The mom throws herself whole-heartedly into raising their little girl (though her legal name is Rose, they call her Iris, for the flowers they planted at Rose's grave), and though the dad is a little uncomfortable at first, he warms up to her before long. The one who ends up having the hardest time is Lily.

She's never expressed it, but she realizes now that Iris is home that she feels bitter towards the whole situation - losing Rose, and then having to upend her entire life just to bring into the world someone who looks like Rose but isn't Rose. And at first, she's not even sure Iris is human, because she acts so mechanical and flat. She looks like Rose, but she doesn't act like Rose. That's not her little sister. Maybe she doesn't even have a soul at all.

So the whole story would just be a slow, everyday sort of family drama in which Iris starts learning about the world, discovering her own emotions and humanity, while Lily has to learn how to be a big sister all over again. By its very nature, this is a pro-life story, and I'd want the themes to be about what it means to be human, the value of every life even when the circumstances are not ideal, and what it means to be a sister. There would definitely be some big emotional moment at the end where the sisters are hugging and crying, and maybe Iris whispers, "Tell me about Rose." And Lily gets to tell her all about her other baby sister.

[shmowder]

PATHOLOGIC CLASSIC ACQUIRED (imagine this in the Dark Souls font)

And here I thought getting Dishonored for $6 was a steal. I bought the Marble Nest too :) Tysm for making a post because I never would have known and there's no way I could pass that up <33 The "fetishized" dialogue afj;ag;a omg

How far into the Bachelor route are you now? Do you think it's best to start with Haruspex? Seems like Changeling is usually reserved for last. And also, does it take about as long to play as Pathologic 2 does?

I'm not sure if I'll start it right after P2 or not but I am excited to have it! My poor neglected Stardew farm :') Conveniently I stopped playing right before a storm was forecasted in my game and I don't have the lightning rod recipe yet... well that can wait, you might say I'm a little hyperfixated for the time being :D

🐿️ anon

WE ARE SO BACK

I may or may not have made that post to nudge some people in the right direction in case they missed the sale. You may or may not have been the person in mind.

Okay, yeah, the jig is up, I made it for you in case you didn't see the sale. Anyone else who ended up getting into patho Classic as a result of that post is also a very good bonus.

Woo congrats on getting the game!! And yes I definitely recommend starting with the haruspex's route since you're coming from P2. It's so fun walking through the first imagining of his story and seeing how different it is than the current P2 adaptation. You keep posting at people and things like "HEY I KNOW YOU. I SAW YOU BEFORE."

So many things are different and so many things stay the same. Artemy is still Artemy which I love.

Also here are some tips for starting the game for someone who came from P2 since some mechanics are switched around.

Most important

You can save Anywhere at Anytime ingame. There is also a quick save and a quick load option with buttons.

In P2 infected houses have the best loot. The opposite is true in P1. The burned houses and districts are the ones you want to be looting at. The infected houses only offer bullets and it's better to get those through trading with kids.

Unlike P2, you can get so many weapons early on, including a rifle, and it's a powerful weapon but can only hold one bullet before reloading. Aim for the head for a clean one-shot kill. Their bullets are the cheapest, shotguns are the next powerful thing, but their bullets are slightly more expensive. Pistols, however, are absolutely shit and you need at least three shots to kill someone with it. Their bullets are double if not triple the price of shotguns and rifles.

You can't trade normal townsfolks for food in P1. All their inventories only include bullets and medicine. You'll be mostly trading with kids while the adults repair your stuff for you in exchange for money, clothes, knives, gun, etc.

Only the gaurds trade you food in exchange for various drops you get from killing looters and bandits.

Otherwise, looting burned houses or healthy ones is your main source of food. There isn't a reputation cost for stealing in this game, so go wild! but the house residents will attack you... well, only the men would, the women run away. Even then, if you're not in the line of sight of the men or in the same room, then they don't come at you at all. If they do, dw they hit with the force of a wet tissue. However, killing them does have a penalty.

In P2 you could get into any house if you knock and your reputation is high enough, that doesn't work in P1. You need lockpicks to open the door to any house, even if your reputation is maxed. They're very cheap and you can keep a stock of them on hand.

There is NO penalty for death. No max health decrease or anything. Mark's snarky punchable face doesn't show up either thank god. Just a small cutscene plays and you're back to the loading screen so you can continue from your last saved point. Don't be afraid to die, it will never lock you out of an ending like in P2.

Personal advice

In the haruspex's route, herbs around the steppe are a permanent spawn, once in a playthrough deal. They don't regrow after you pick them up, and their locations are scripted. Your main source of herbs will be trading worms. You NEED blood to begin the trade once per day, even if you don't actually take anything. After it, you can freely trade them organs– including blood, animal meat, and milk–in exchange for herbs. The most valuable organ to harvest and trade is the heart. Not just any worms, either. There are only three in the whole map, and they live in small hats spread out through the steppe.

Swindle Andrey Stamatin as fast as you can if you wanna make BANK. That idiot overpays for your herbs with bullets and a shotgun. You can exchange 50 herbs (or 25 if you get the kind worth double the price that day) for a shotgun every day! then you can sell your abundance of shotguns to any shop in town. All shops have infinite money and will buy all of your trash no matter what.

Walking diagonally is slightly faster than walking straight forward. Walking directly to the sides is the slowest.

Don't bother to cure infected bounds that aren't yours. They won't die. wait until day 12 if you want to cure them so you don't risk them getting infected again.

Eggs suck as a source of food in this game, crackers and milk are meh too. Bread is the most cost/hungerfill efficient when you do buy food. All the meats come after.

You don't need to drink water at all! No thirst, but no sprint either. Still they are usefull to collect and fill to trade with drunks in exchange for bandages.

Remember that huge amount of dough you made off of the dumb dumb Andrey? Yeah, well, if you ever happen to murder... say a child or ten innocent civilians and spread them out on the street in front of the Bachelor house to send a clear message. THEN GOOD NEWS! You can quickly erect back your reputation faster than any pill of viagra ever could! with these gaint loads of cash money. Give these fat stacks to any begger passing by, and your plummeting reputation will be as brand as new.

Keep in mind that all the bounds will lie to you in P1 so much more than P2. People are meaner and more cunning. they're only looking out for their own hide rather than actually saving the town, yes even the ruling families. Trust no one. They will milk as many free favours as they could from you, so always make sure to pick the options where you ask for a reward in return and always push for more money than they first offer. You can snag a pistol as the bachelor if you annoy a person enough, and you can secure money from Maria as the haruspex on the first day if you play your cards right.

Do check Victoria's Olgimskaya grave on the first day, there is always bread and milk bottles there. They disappear on the second day however so steal them quickly.

You can catch rats by holding shift and sneaking up behind them, and then you can enslave those rats to gamble with in undergone rat racing communities run by underage kids in dog masks. That is the only way to earn real ethical money in all of pathologic. 300 per race won. It's also an absolute horeshit source of income that cannot even pay for a single egg.

Dialogue matters much more in P1 than it did in P2. You can lock yourself out of quests if you're rude to people or if you reveal too much. Always suck up and lie to others.

You can cheese all fights, even the hardest one in the whole game, without taking a single hit if you just immediately walk backwards after every punch you give. Basically, stay far from the person, then walk forward and press the hit button halfway through before you reach them. The animation will hit exactly as you reach them. Immediately start moving back so their own punch won't land. Some fights prevent you from using a gun, so this tactic helps a ton. In P2, it is impossible to win a fight against two people at once no matter what, but in P1, I easily took out 4 men on the first day with nothing but my fists. The combat is old school clunky, and it's very easy to take advantage of that.

You can climb over fences... or well, glitch over fences and other stuff if you try. All objects have sqaure hit boxes ingame, and if you jump towards the sharp corner of the invisible square hit box, then spam the jump button, you will climb it and land on top or the other side Be careful. However, if you jump inside a closed area, you'll need a sharp edge to climb back out. Otherwise, you're stuck for life. That's how I got trapped in the cow pen on my first day as the bachelor because I saw adorable cows and couldn't help hopping the fence.

Here is me stuck in the said cow pan, slowly starving to death while admiring the cows.

But I also got on top of the polyhedron with that method once hehe

scapels are useless. You don't need them to preform surgery either. Artemy can bear claw the organs out like it's nobody's business. Best to sell.

Rats will bite you, watch out! gun or knife them down before they tear the skin off of your ankles and infect you.

the prices rise immediately 10× times on the second day, then gradually drop and rise. They don't slowly double and triple like P2 on the second and third days... I found out the hard way when I bought food on day 2 in P1, thinking holy fuck I better hurry before they double 20×. Only for them to immediately drop to 5x the next day :)

Despite what all the youtubers claim, the jump button IS NOT useless. You can parkour around furniture and evade plague clouds easily. The game "AI" is extremely stupid and easy to trick. You are a human, they are not, take massive advantage of that and oursmart the AI by confusing it. Walk on furniture, turn around a corner, do a lap around the plague cloud.

If the clouds do corner you with no way out, make sure to stick to the wall when walking through them. This way, only very little of their hit box will actually touch you, and the game might turn a blind eye bc it's old programming, and if X ≠ Y then you get away without any immunity penality or risk of infection.

You are smart. They are not. This includes the hostile npc AI. You can get looters stuck on house walls very easily and have a sitting duck running in place, waiting for you to shoot it and put it out of its misery.

There is a special type of plague clouds in P1 that are called angel clouds. They are a rich orange and suddenly fly at you out of nowhere in the middle of the street. They are extremely fast and if you panic and run away then they get faster and catch up. The best way to evade them is to freeze, don't move a muscle or your character. They will hover over you for a couple seconds without infecting you, then disappear on their own.

While protective clothes and immunity pills worked perfectly in P2 as preventive methods against the plague, they are more of a vague suggestion to plague clouds in P1. Even if your immunity is full, you can still get infected by a cloud. The chance is low but never zero. Your protective gear does help but a very very small amount, until you get your hands on the good stuff when the army arrives! Those where the days where I'd empty every single house in infected areas from loot.

Here is a mod I use for the Ingame UI. It makes it much bigger and cleaner since the original Patho classic UI is extremely small for some reason, so are the icons. I was squinting at the screen so much until I decided to use this mode instead.

It's a straightforward deal modding patho classic. Just drag the mod folder into your ingame folder then click replace when the confirmation window pops up. You can access the ingame files by going to Steam->Pathologic classic HD->options->locate game folder->drag mod files into the folder titled "date"

It doesn't change any aspect ingame, just the UI scale and icons resolutions.

Here are also some maps that helped me tremendously!

I drew that heart on those two houses because they had two shmowder girlies in each one.

This is a map of all the herbs scripted spawn locations. Remember they don't regrow so cross them off of the map as you take them.

If all of this is too much and you just wanna play the game for the plot, then use the console commands!

I'm actually not sure how they work, I never used them. However, the free camera mode does sound intriguing, so maybe I'll try it after finishing all three routes!

Using them does disable steam achievements.

There is a god mode which makes you unable to die and a spawn item command. Check the wiki for more.

Now you made it through all of this? Great job on surviving! Here is me throwing you a bone in the form of Yulia content so you'd be more tempted to play tha game.

Look at all these pretty screenshots! Look at how polite she is with the haruspex! Literally, all the other characters either treat you as a charmless idiot or a dangerous ripper.

Victor blatantly tries to manipulate you once with the same tactics they use on cocomelon by slowly walking you through the current events and explaining how they are not going to your benefits, so maybe you should do something? He has zero faith in Artemy that conversation was so hilarious. Victor kept giving walls of texts, and all of Artemy's replies were different forms of "huh...why?" or "nah"

At the end, he just gives up on you. Like fr it was a long stretched out painful conversation for him... and Artemy just stood there, twiddling his thumbs, clearly not listening to a single thing or understanding the heavy implications.

Forget not reading between the lines. Victor gave him a condensed heavy summary worth a noble prize in literature that he must have spent all night revising and rewriting, only for Artemy to not even glance at the title.

Then, it abruptly ends like that. Victor doesn't insult you. He doesn't get angry or bothered when you–Artemy–manage to somehow beat the odds and perform even worse than the low bar of expectations set for you. He just shuts his mouth and quiets down, accepting that some people's skulls are too thick for manipulation.

It is especially double the funny when you start the bachelor route and see the contrast in how Victor treats him. Suddenly, he's using euphemism and rhetorics. He basically convinces you, the player and the bachelor, to do his bidding in very little words. Daniil himself walks into this trap with his own blabbering mouth because Victor knows that man can't resist yapping.

Artemy gets the gogo gaga treatment from Victor while Daniil gets subjected to manipulation tactics that are considered war crimes by governments all over the world.

And not just Victor, even the judge tries a different approach to get Artemy to work for the Kains once. The candy approach where he butters you up, Artemy immediately recoils when he is called "master Burakh" and has to stop himself from throwing up with every sentence the judge speaks. Polite talk and prestigious compliments make the haruspex breaks out in a rash and the judge's plan backfires when you tell him to fuck off and mind his own business before storming away.

Finally it's Maria's turn who already made a very bad impression by blatantly insulting Artemy in a pub thinking he is some random hobo. Now she is suddenly sweet and a damsel in distress who needs the big strong steppe man to go retrieve a simple dairy for her.

She fails to mention how the dairy is guarded by three arson enthusiasts fanatics who are rudely insistence about shoving their fire molotovs down your throat.

When Artemy obviously refuses, she is the only one smart enough... and desperate enough out of the Kains to reach for the low hanging fruit.

MONEY.

She basically tells him yeah yeah i get it, just stfu and bring me the dairy and I'll pay you.

Artemy says nuh uh double it or nothing.

And she does, and it makes the molotov impalement sting slightly less <3

The Kains realised something that day, that it is possible for a human to be so dense that it comes back all the way around to absolute manipulation immunity. Three failed attempts in a row, they humiliated themselves and had to take the L and go to bed.

Meanwhile, the damsel act actually gets the bachelor to speak this sentence out loud during his first ever meeting with Maria Kaina.

Daniil meeting Maria Kaina for the first time:

The same Daniil, literally 5 seconds after:

HOLY MOLY DANKOVSKY CALM THE BEAST DOWN, HER UNCLE WAS JUST MURDERED AND YOUR DIGNITY WON'T LAST TO THE END OF THE WEEK IF YOU KEEP OFFERING IT TO THE KAINS ON A SILVER PLATTER.

First Victor gets him to willingly walk into a trap and lowers his guard.

Then the judge runs circles around him and makes Daniil think that it was his own idea to want to investigate the murder then sends him off to Victor again with a slap on the ass for good luck.

Then it's Victor's turn again who sends him off into the night with a dismissive wave after realising the famous Bachelor of medicine is as prone to manipulation as he is to bad fashion statements.

FINALLY MARIA GETS HIM and makes a joke out of him in the span of 5 seconds. All she has to do is pout a bit and Daniil is already stuffing himself into the nearest armor suit to be her saviour white knight.

EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. OF. THEM. IS. LYING.

This isn't me speculating! This is legit what's happening. The Kains lie,

They themselves tell Daniil that they are lying.

More than once!

To his own face!!

The Judge tells him in the first meeting that all the heads families will try to manipulate him and conceal the truth, that he should never ever take anyone's words for granted, including the Kains themselves.

And what does Daniil Dankovsky say?

"Wow you're so upfront and honest!!! Well, that just makes me trust you even more <33 I am definitely picking the right option by putting my complete faith in family that suspiciously resembles a textbook definition of a cult, what could ever go wrong??"

I want to scream at him. I want to reach into the screen, grab his shoulders and just SHAKE. shake him until his brain falls back into place because it must have gotten lodged somewhere during the bumpy train ride here.

"Oh bohoo Aglaya manipulated me :"( Artemy you must knife her rn"

No Daniil. She didn't. You manipulated your goddamn self. Saying she did it implies an active effort on her part.

This man would look at a grandfather clock and immediately fall into a hypnosis. Scatch that, even a cuckoo clock would do the job. The next day he wakes up with bread crumbs all over his suit and eggs–that are suspiciously warm–under his blanket.

Don't you understand? It's not his fault!! THE WOODEN BIRD MANIPULATED HIM INTO IT! WHAT WAS HE SUPPOSED TO DO?

[yikesitskennawrites]

Transitions- Chapter Twenty-Five: Coffee From Lauren

Series Masterlist

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Pairings: Steven Grant x (platonic) Reader, Marc Spector x (platonic) Reader, Jake Lockley x (platonic) Reader, Layla El-Faouly x (platonic) Reader  

---

“Thank you so much for the coffee,” You tell Lauren. She sat on the metal cart next to the counter top that you were currently sitting on. Her legs swung back and forth as she adjusted her bun on top of her head. It was a slow morning so far, one that you were grateful for due to your exhaustion, yet, you also hated it because sitting still made you more aware of how tired you were. 

“You rarely ask for these types of things, the least I could do is buy you a coffee as a thanks for picking up my shift this Friday.” She smiles, her own coffee cup filled with lemon tea sat on the counter you perched on. You sip on your warm beverage as she speaks. Right, you have a double shift in a couple of days from now. Seven in the morning to six in the evening, fun. You roll your eyes at that. It was a day you would make a lot of money though, hopefully you’ll be well rested enough to not be too tired throughout that day. You already knew what you were doing tonight after work, eat dinner with Steven and Marc and go right to bed. You had to get a new laptop this weekend too, school was on Monday and that was less than a week away. 

You were stressed about that. You really needed that laptop for your senior year otherwise you would have to drop out and re-enroll next year or try and get your GED. It would be difficult trying to apply once more since they would try to contact you for your whereabouts and why you weren’t doing any school work within the first two weeks of the term. So, you would have to create a new identity and that would be even harder this time around since the American government has finally got most of their shit together. It was pure chaos when everyone came back, the government was backed up on files since the sudden appearance of everyone who was gone for five years came back. It took awhile for them to get ninety percent of the blipped back on file and confirm their status of life. 

The cheapest option for you to buy a laptop is if you could find one at a yard sale like you did for your previous one, but that might not happen. You haven’t seen any flyers for a garage or yard sale. You know for a fact you don’t have five hundred euros saved to buy a brand new computer, you had enough for small items like the strawberry waffles you keep internally promising to buy for Marc and Steven, and maybe the pyramid paperweight you saw at that glass shop a couple of months ago.

“What are you thinking about?” Lauren asks as she sips her tea. You could see the lemon flavored tea paper attached to the tea bag string in her cup from where you sat. You blink tiredly at her and smile. 

“Just the amount of sleep I didn’t have last night.”

“You haven’t slept?”

“I’ve been up for-” You pause and place your coffee next to you before you count off the amount of hours you have been up since. You worked yesterday and didn’t get any shut eye last night. Your shift yesterday was at eight am, but you woke up at six thirty and right now it's nearing ten, so you’ve been up for almost twenty-eight hours and you don’t get off until three. 

“I’ve been up for almost twenty eight hours.” You tell her and her mouth drops open. 

“Are you serious?”

“Deadass.” You say as you pick up your coffee and sip on it. You didn’t want to drink it too quickly and have a caffeine crash mid-shift or on the bus ride back to the apartments and miss your stop. You were falling asleep on your feet this morning, the passenger you almost fell asleep on moved several feet away from where you stood so you couldn’t drool on their backpack. 

“That’s not healthy.” Lauren says with a frown. “Is there something keeping you up?” You let the caffeinated liquid sit in your mouth as you think of what to say. You couldn’t tell her the whole truth. It would sound insane if you did. You can’t tell her about Khonshu and his declaration of not being the god that held you out a window Saturday. You also have to keep quiet about your neighbor who you began to trust and his lies that made you take a couple steps back and think of who he is. Could you trust him completely? You don’t know and that thought alone hurts you. You can’t tell her about your friend, Layla, and her weird absence on Saturday, what was up with that? Maybe she was doing some black market shit? That would be a huge can of worms to open with Lauren. And finally, you can’t talk to her about Jake and how he threatened to kill you and yet, he saved your ass and made sure you were breathing for a month and a half; and now his absence and zero want to communicate with anyone, including you, kind of, surprisingly, hurts.  

You don’t like that he threatened to kill you, but for a while, he was the only person you had. You can’t tell Lauren that because she would absolutely call the police.

“I’m just anxious,” You tell her a slice of the truth. Saying that this weekend was terrible would be an understatement. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asks. You knew that she truly meant her promise about how you could talk to her about anything. But, you can’t take her up on this. Maybe in the future you can tell her about any normal problem such as how you mixed colors in your wash and now all your white shirts are pink and the amount of frustration you feel for yourself for that mistake. But, this anxiety issue needs to be kept away from her. You don’t know what you will do if Lauren ever finds out the truth about what you know. You will admit that you would feel relieved that you had someone normal to talk to about the existence of deities, your neighbors and how one works for a god and took down a cult, and also your friend's occupation as an illegal seller for the black market. You can’t let her in on the truth about yourself, though. If Lauren ever finds out about your real age and your fraud, she will never trust you again. Straight to the police station you go. 

“I don’t know why I’m anxious,” You lie and shrug to make it more believable as you bore your tired gaze onto her. “I need to start taking melatonin if this becomes a habit.” 

“You’ll need to go to the doctor if this becomes a habit.” She corrects. “When was the last time you went to the doctor?”

“When I lived in New York, I think I was…” You squint in thought. “Thirteen.” It was true that the last time you visited the healthcare clinic was for a bone you thought you broke but turned out you sprained it. That was- for you- nearly four years ago. But as far as Lauren knew that was-

“Five years ago?” She says. “Ten years actually! The healthcare here is free, you need to go get some check-ups done.” 

“I know, I know.” You groan. “It’s just that it costs so much in America without the insurance and even if you did have insurance it would cost like five hundred dollars for it.”

“Well, it’s free here.”

“I know.” You repeat. “It was a habit to not go to the doctor or the hospital unless you absolutely needed it.”

“A habit that is free to break.” She says. You nod in agreement. “Molly needs to go to the doctors soon for her yearly check up.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She needs to go on the scale and the measurement scale and get her knees tapped at with those hammers.”

“Any shots?”

“I don’t think so.” She says. “Jamie needs to get his four year shots next year. He needs to get his polio and mumps and measles. When Molly got hers, she was crying and we had to reward her with ice cream for being so brave.” You smile at the thought of little Molly crying as she ate her ice cream. It was a comedic sight to imagine. The last time you received any vaccinations was for your annual flu shots in your local pharmacy, you were fifteen and still underneath your parents insurance plan. You should make an appointment for the flu shots this year so it wouldn’t hit you as hard as it did last year, but you weren’t sure if you needed to be insurance to receive the vaccinations.

“Well, it’s Jamie's turn to get ice cream for his reward.” You smile. “Are you packed for your trip?”

“No,” She groans. “We’re doing that tomorrow. We still have to pack the kids bags since they’re staying at Kris’s parents house this weekend.” 

“Are they excited to be staying at their grandparents house?”

“They are! They don’t seem to realize that it’s more than one night though.”

“It’s going to be a surprise when they realize that you aren’t picking them up until Sunday night.” You laugh. “They’re going to miss their mom’s.” 

“Every time I think about that I almost begin to cry.” She says. You glance at her and sure enough there were tears forming in her eyes. 

“It’s just for the weekend, they’ll be fine.” 

“Their grandfather is going to feed them a lot of sugar and send them home with us.” She says, you laugh. 

“That’s the rules though.” You say. “They’ll eat the sugar and be hyperactive before inevitably crashing.” “Just like you are?” She asks and gestures to the coffee next to you. 

“You’re the one who ordered it to be sugary.”

“Well, having pure black coffee is a crime.” 

“My dad used to drink it straight from the pot without adding any milk or sugar to it. He should have gone to jail for it.” You joke and she grins at that. “I don’t know how he did it, but he drank it every morning.” A ping of sadness hits you as you finish the statement. Your dad will never drink coffee again and you will never have the opportunity to make fun of him for it with him standing next to you. 

“What’s your favorite coffee so I know what to order for you the next time around.” She asks and you swallow around the lump forming in your throat.

“You don’t have to-” “I know I don’t,” She cuts you off. “So spill, what is it?” 

“Caramel Frappuccino.”

“You basic bitch.”

“You can’t just ask me for my favorite drink and bully me for it.”

“I just did.”

“You have no room to speak because you are drinking lemon tea.” You gesture to her paper cup. 

“At least I have taste.”

“Yeah, weak ass taste.” You scoff. “You didn’t even get raspberry and mint or some other tea with more than one flavor. You paid a coffee shop to make you tea, something you could have made at your own place.”

“I could say the same for your coffee.”

“Actually you can’t because I don’t have a Keurig.” You say before you pick up your cup and sip on the liquid. 

“This is why us English people don’t like you Americans.”

“We don’t even like ourselves.” You laugh and she chimes in with you. The noise hurts your ears in the small space but the sound was melodic. A light feeling spreads through your chest as you both giggle at your teasing of each other. You missed this, the feeling of being relaxed and carefree enough to crack some jokes. It’s been awhile since you haven’t been obsessed with whatever new drama was happening in your life. It was nice to have a normal friend who wasn’t tied to deities or cults. Once the laughter dies out, a comfortable silence settles between you. The bell above the entrance rings and Lauren pushes herself off of the cart and briefly pats your thigh as she passes you. 

You could hear her greet the customer from where you sat on the counter. You listen to her talk about the specials of the day and if there were any coupons underneath the desk that the customer could use for their meal. You only tuned out when you began staring blankly at the box of spices on the shelf across from you. Saying you were ready for bed would be an understatement. The caffeinated beverage was helping a little but not as much as you wish that it would. The word of the black pepper on the side of the cardboard box you burn your gaze into became indistinct the longer you stared at it. You knew what the word was and what it meant, but there was an odd disconnect from it. Your brain was not quite clicking it together in your mind. 

This only happened one other time when you were at your lowest a couple of weeks after moving to London. Everything that was words whether it was on the back of a granola box or sentences of articles on your phone became a blur of unknown words and phrases that you could not comprehend for the life of you. Staring at the two bolded words in front of you now, an odd feeling settles in your chest. You couldn’t describe the feeling, it was hard to put a finger on what it felt like. You force yourself to blink and look away from the box. You could hear Lauren tell the customer to have a good day before you hear her footsteps on the tile floor and see her near you out of the corner of your eye. 

“I was joking about your taste,” She says as she hops back onto the cart and grins at you. “If that wasn’t clear and you feel insulted about your terrible choice in coffee.” She adds. You don’t say anything for a moment as you muddle your way to form a proper sentence in your mind and make it roll off of your tongue so she wouldn’t get concerned and send you back to your apartment early. 

“I know and I was joking about your poor taste in tea.” You say, it doesn’t sound like it came from you despite the vibration in your throat. You rapidly blink as she parts her mouth in fake irritation. You breathe in through your mouth and hold your breath for a moment before letting go. 

“It’s decent taste actually.” She defends herself. The words on the box in front of you made much more better sense in your mind as you forced out a laugh. This time the noise sounded like it belonged to you. 

You trail your tired gaze back to her as you say, “Hmm. Sure.” Whatever has just happened to you scared you a little. Maybe it was caused by the lack of sleep you had, whatever it was you didn’t want to experience again. 

Lauren didn’t seem to notice you as she says, “That customer wanted me to put crisps on their sandwich.”

“Did you?”

“No! That would be cross contamination if I did.”

“Good.” You say. “Emily told me that someone asked her if she could put cookies on their sandwich.” She wrinkles her nose at that.

“Cookies?” She says, “Like the ones in the cookie cabinet?”

“Those exact ones. Chocolate chip onto of their ham sandwich.” You reply. You watch as a look of disgust forms on her face and you agree with her. When you first heard the story, you had the same expression as she has now. You pick up your coffee and sip on it. 

“That's disgusting.”

“I can get potato chips on top of a sandwich, but cookies?” You shake your head. “That's a crime in itself. They need to be jailed.”

“Agreed.” She says. The bell above the entrance rings and you both share a look before looking at the monitor. It was just a single customer, you couldn’t tell who they were from the glare of the lighting but that didn’t matter. You trail your gaze away from the monitor and to Lauren.

“Your turn.” She says before she picks up her own cup and sips on her tea. It was only fair if you were to take turns until lunch rush came. You blink tiredly and yawn as you place your cup onto the counter and hop off of it. You raise your arms above your head to stretch your muscles as you begin to walk to the front. Another yawn escapes you as you greet your first customer of the day.

You don’t care how many orders you messed up today, you were just glad to be ten minutes away from your neighbors apartment. Usually, you would be beating yourself up for putting ranch on a customer's sandwich when they clearly asked for mayonnaise; but you were way past the point of caring by the end of your shift. Your coffee was long gone and your bladder was empty from the endless amount of peeing you seemed to go through today. Caffeine makes you pee more often and you weren’t used to having so much caffeine in a day. You could feel yourself crashing with every step you took towards your apartment complex. Your feet ache and your back hurts a little. 

Maybe you’ll change the plans of you passing out after dinner to taking a nap on Stevens couch before eating instead. You don’t know if that would make you more cranky if Steven or Marc wake you for the meal, but you don’t care enough about it. If you’re lucky, maybe Steven has some snacks you could eat instead of waiting for dinner. Or you could just go to your own apartment and sleep on the couch, you could put your phone on silent and shoot Steven a text message stating that you won’t make it to dinner. Perhaps you’ll pop into his apartment and show him that you’re alive and breathing before heading over to your own and passing out for the remainder of the afternoon and night. 

You would like to sleep in his bed since it wouldn’t hurt your back as badly as your couch does, and his place brings you comfort, but you just want to sleep in peace more than anything. Marc or Steven might make too much noise for you to fall asleep and you weren’t going to ask them to be quiet in their own flat. If Khonshu or whatever deity decides to fuck with you when you’re trying to sleep in your apartment, damn them. You’re tired and cranky enough to beat a bitches ass if they decide to pull some shit like that. Maybe they’ll be willing to show their face and you can pop them in their jaws. You’ll like to think that you’re pissed off enough to throw hands with them. Either way, sleep was your main priority and nothing was going to-

Suddenly, the feeling of something or someone grabbing the back of your shirt and dragging you into the open end of the alley you were just passing causes you to lose your train of thought. You yelp as you get slammed into the brick wall, knocking your head against it and you let out a groan at the contact. Holy fucking shit. You snap your eyes in the direction of the open end of the alley and see someone standing there. They wore a cloth mask on the lower half of their face and a beanie covering their hair. The jacket they wore was zipped up to their neck and a turtle neck shirt hid any identification on their body, the black pants were baggy on their legs. The only visible thing was their brown eyes and the white skin surrounding it. They held onto a knife with glove-covered hands and you can feel their eyes glaring onto your body. You can not catch a fucking break this week, can you?

“Give me all your money,” They said, their voice deep and gruff. Your stance tenses as you stare at him. Just three months ago you were in almost the exact same situation, why does this bullshit seem to only happen to you? Well, you don’t want it to happen to anyone but it was weird that it happened twice to you. 

“I’m flattered that you think I have any.” You say. You know that you shouldn’t be rude to this man and you should hand over any cash you have on you, which you don’t since tips were terrible today. You were more awake than you have been all day thanks to the adrenaline rushing through you. The heaviness in your limbs and the baggy feeling around your eyes was gone. You were slowly planning on how to escape this situation. You could pretend to give him some cash or punch him in his dumb face and run for it; or you could throw your apron at him as a distraction and run- wait where the fuck is your apron? You rack your brain for where you left it and your heart nearly drops to your stomach as you realize that you left it in your locker after you grabbed your phone, keys and the Eye of Horus paper. 

Fucking fuck. Okay, scratch that, go with plan number one and if you get shanked, you have to leave the knife in and go get help. God, you just wanted to go nap and this fucker decides to choose you to mug. Life really just stopped holding back their punches, huh? What did you do to upset the universe?

“I know you.” He says after a long pause. You squint at him. Maybe he was a customer you served today and that’s why he says that he knows you? You sure as hell don’t know anybody that would rob teenagers for their tip money. Well, maybe Jake would though? Where the fuck is he when you need him anyways? Man, it would be the perfect time for him to swoop down from the buildings and do his Moon Knight thing. Kick some ass, take some names. Beat the absolute shit out of this guy so you could go take a nap. Do you have to call for him to come appear and save you or does Khonshus job only happen at night? You doubt that Khonshu would warn Jake about the situation that you’re in. The little bird-bitch. 

“I don’t know you.” You say. Man, you really should have brought your taser. What’s the point of having a taser if you don’t carry it around on you? You just didn’t want to get arrested for having one on you because it’s illegal in the United Kingdom. But, it would be really fucking handy to have it now. You could feel your phone pressing against your thigh. The emergency number for the U.K is 999, all you have to do is be able to call them if you need to. You should actually dial them and report a mugging but you don’t want to get involved with the police because of what you did to move countries. You only need to call them if you get a stab wound or any other major injuries. 

You tuck your fingers inward to make a fist as you prepare yourself to throw hands. You did this last time and you only got away because of your neighbors. They aren’t here now, so you’re on your own. Maybe you’ll call Marc's number if you get stabbed, he was in the marines and a mercenary, he has to have knowledge on stab wounds. He told you not to call his number unless it was a emergency and if this isn’t one than you don’t know what the fuck is.

“You don’t remember me?” He says. You almost snort at how pretentious he sounds. 

“Yeah, I don’t remember every brown eyed bitch that is willing to rob a kid.” You say. Why is he so surprised that you don’t know who the fuck he is?

“We met before.” He supplies and you stare blankly at him. You obviously were familiar to him unless he was mistaking you for another person.

“June.” He hints and your mouth parts open in surprise. This man is the same god damn mugger from before! Holy fucking shit. You almost laugh at that. Even after Marc beat his ass, he still is working the same nine to five job and he’s boasting about it. You stare at the eye slits across his face, any bruises that he might have had were healed. He sure as hell didn’t learn his lesson. What were you supposed to say to him now that he confirmed who he is? Hey man, how have you been? Still mugging teens huh? Or: How’s the kids and partner? Are y’all still a family or married? Going through a divorce huh? Yeah, I would divorce you too if I found out you were mugging children.

“Oh,” You say instead. “I thought you were dead for a while.” His eyes narrow at you. You did hope that he wasn’t dead because it would have meant you were a acquaintance to murder; but if he did kick the bucket, it means that you would be safe from this and you would be going up the stairwell and napping sooner than later.

“Still alive and well.” He snarls at you. You glance at the knife he held. It was the size of a bodice dagger, the blade was about five inches long. If you get stabbed, that’s going to cause some damage. Of course, it depends how bad it will be for where he aims and lands on. You just need to throw a punch and push past him. You need to run for your apartment. Wait, should you lead him to where you live? That sounds like a terrible idea. Okay, well, maybe you should book it for the bus stop? There has to be people there. There’s no fucking way that this man would be willing to stab a kid in front of a group of bystanders. 

“I still don’t have any-” You start but get cut off by his fist connecting with your face. Your head whips to your right as all your breath seems to stop and freeze in your chest. The pounding in your head covers any noise that could have warned you that he was taking a step forward before you feel his hand wrap the cloth of your shirt into his fist. He smelled like cigarettes and axe body spray. The left side of your face stung from the impact and you knew that a bruise would be forming on your face by tomorrow if you make it out of this situation alive.

You reach up and grasp his wrist, your fingernails digging into the cloth of his gloves. If you’re going to die at the hands of this fucker, you’re going to get his DNA underneath your damn nails for the police. He pulls you forward and slams your back into the wall, whatever breath you had is gone as soon as you felt the impact. Your head stung and your chest aches. You let go of his wrist and form your hand into a fist before swinging. His head whips to the side and he groans at the impact of your fist against his cheek. Slowly, he turns his head and glares angrily at you. Did he seriously not expect you to fight back? 

He lets go of your shirt and steps back a little before his fist makes contact with your stomach. You wheeze at the feeling and bend forward, clutching your torso with both hands before he grabs you by the back of your collar and throws you down to the ground. You roll a couple of feet, your skin gets torn apart due to the road burn. You slow to a complete stop and groan as you lay on your side. The gravel of the alley digs into your skin and crunches underneath his feet as he walks towards you. Fucking hell your body hurts. Your palms sting as you roll onto your back and try to catch your breath from being punched in the gut. You need to get up before he kicks the ever-loving shit out of you and gives you a concussion or breaks your ribs or arms.

You need to get up before he makes sure that this is the last bit of daylight you’ll ever see. Through half lidded eyes, you stare at the bright blue sky above you, and watch a bird fly over you with its wings spread wide. You couldn’t tell what type it was and you didn’t care much at the moment to think about it. You just need to get up. You need to get the fuck up. Your palms press into the gravel as you bend your torso to sit up. The muscles in your torso ache in protest as a shadow blocks your view of the sky above you. You bend your neck back and glare at the man before you. You could feel trickles of blood run down your forehead and you saw the drip of blood drop from the arch of your right brow and hit your cheek before continuing on trailing a path down your face.

He swipes the knife across your cheek and narrowly misses your eye. You jerk backwards from him as a sting of pain spikes across the fresh wound and warm blood runs down your face. A gasp leaves you and a scream begins to build up in your throat. This is the moment that you understood that he wanted more than money or any belongings that he could pawn, he wanted revenge; and even though you weren’t the one who beat his ass until he was unconscious, you were there as your neighbor did so and you didn’t stop him. 

You saw his leg swing back before you felt his foot make contact with your ribs. You fall back, your head hitting against the ground and once again, all air gets knocked out of your lungs. He steps forward, placing his foot on your chest and putting all his body weight onto the joint as he leans downward a bit and stares at you. The sunlight glints off of the blade he grasps in his hand and momentarily blinds you. This was going to be difficult to run away from since he’s already beating your ass. You need to scream for help, surely there’s someone nearby and willing to check in on you or call the police. Your hands wrap around his calf as you try to push him off of you so you could inhale some air but alas your attempts are futile.

You kick your feet against the ground, scrambling for some leverage. Maybe if you use the force of your torso against him he will stumble away from you. Your shoes slide against the gravel as you struggle to plant your feet onto the ground and force your torso into the yoga bridge pose. He presses his foot down harder and you swore that you felt your sternum crack under the pressure. You let your legs slide down and lay flat against the ground as you stare with anger at the man. You could feel panic begin to settle in your bones as you open and close your mouth like a fish out of water. You need to scream for help but you had no air in your lungs to do so. You try to force away the panic so you would have a clear brain to think with. 

Okay, you need to get him off. How do you get this fucking man off of you? Your eyes land on the one sight that all of your male classmates would protect the most during a game of dodgeball at recess in middle-school. He’s a man with a weak spot that happens to be right at arm's length. You should have realized it before, you would have gotten him off of you sooner. You let go of his calf and ball your hand into a fist before harshly slamming it against the area where the sun doesn’t shine. He lets out a gasp of air and stumbles back a few steps. You take a deep breath of air as you waste zero time to push yourself off of the ground. 

You spare a glance down at your palms and frown at the sight of blood seeping from the wounds that were made from when you scraped along the pavement when he threw you down. You pat your pockets for your belongings as you walk towards him. He was bent over and clutching his privates as he blocked the only exit to the alley. You need to run past him and book it for either your apartment or the bus stop. You pick up your pace into a jog before pushing your legs to move faster past him. He reaches out on his right side and grabs onto the cloth of your shirt and tugs you towards him. He stands up straight as you call for help, screaming it like you were a getting murdered and it was your last chance of survival, and it sure as hell felt exactly like that. Your back hits his chest as his left arm wraps around your throat and his knife pokes into your throat.

“Call for fucking help one more time and I’ll slit your god damn throat.” He threatens. Huh, this sounds awfully familiar. Your nose began to sting from the tears forming in your eyes. You could only hope that anyone that was nearby would be willing to check on your pleas. Maybe you’ll get really lucky and someone would pass the alleyway and see this. He kicks at the back of your knees, letting go of you temporarily as your knees give out underneath you and hit the gravel. He bends down, wrapping his arm once more around your throat and digging the tip of his blade back into your skin. You feel the blade digging into your throat as he bends down and begins to pat your torso for anything to take from you. 

With each hard pat, you know that the spots will be red from his hits. His hands trail down to your jean pockets and he pulls out the Ziploc bag that contains the Eye of Horus paper, your lanyard falls out of the same pocket and lands on the ground. 

“What is this?” He says behind your ear. His breath was hot on your ear and you wince at how close he is to you. He keeps your head tucked to his body as he removes the knife from your throat so both of his hands are available to open the baggy. You know that the piece of paper was just that: a piece of paper. But you don’t want him to damage it. It brought you comfort like it was a teddy bear and you don’t want to lose that. He takes out the paper and drops the bag as he unfolds the parchment. You swallow as you look down your nose and at the eye that stares back at you. Your blood drips off of your jawline and onto the paper, a small splat could be heard as it hits the parchment.

“Horus.” He grumbles, “What is that? An anime character or some shit?” You don’t answer, you weren’t going to explain to this prick what this symbol means. He doesn’t add anything but scoffs, you think the sound meant that he finished skimming through the description of the god and the protection symbol. He grips the edge of the paper and you nearly cry out when he tears it in half. Your wide eyes watch as he layers the paper over each other and he tears it once again. He lets the paper drop to the gravel, you swallow around the lump forming in your throat and try to ignore the sting of your nose and tears begin to make your eyesight blurry. 

More of your blood soaks the torn paper as his hand travels to your other pocket and pulls out your phone, the lock-screen picture of your parents lighting up on the device with the movement before he clicks the button on the side and the screen goes black. In the reflection, you could see your injured face and the desperation behind your eyes.

“Please don’t take that.” You plead. “That’s the only thing I have left of my parents.” Every photo of the life you had before was on that phone since you don’t visit your old social media accounts in fear of it stating that you were active online. The SD card was still in the phone and any image saved to the device was more valuable than gold to you. You don’t see him pocket the phone but you can hear him do so. This time the tears roll down your cheeks and the sob you were holding back leaves your throat. His grip tightens around your windpipe, making you choke on your own sob and quiet down from anyone who might be nearby. All of this for zero money and just to get some revenge on a teenager for being in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Fuck this dude. You felt the tip of the blade poking into your neck before you saw his right arm was up and pointing the knife at your throat. The tip drags from the right side of your neck and to the back of your neck. Another choked sob escapes you as tears blur your vision and mix with the trail of blood and sting the cut on your cheek. 

You felt his boot hit your back before you registered that you were face down on the pavement. The smell of metal, dirt, and paper fill your nostrils before you roll over onto your back with a groan and a half moan for help. He marches a couple of steps to your left and he pulls back his leg, the toe of his boot hitting the side of your head, once, twice, three times before he directs his kicks to your side. He had what he wanted, your phone. He could wipe the memory off of it and reset the device before trading it into a pawn shop for some cash. But, this was the cherry on top of the cake for him. He’s getting his revenge nearly three months later and you were nothing to him but a punching bag. 

You don’t know when your eyes closed and darkness took you from the beating you were receiving. But you do know that when your eyes peel open, your lashes stick to your cheeks from the dried blood on your skin, that the world is spinning and it isn't going to stop any time soon. You lay still, your body past the point of it aching and hurting and more into the territory of it feeling like you got hit by a bus and you were in absolute pain. You could feel a puddle of blood surrounding your head and the damp collar of your work shirt didn’t help the suffocating feeling you were experiencing by how it clung to your skin and around your bruising neck. 

The sky above you was covered in gray and white clouds that were slowly darkening with patches of blue poking through. It was going to rain soon and you didn’t want to risk walking back to your apartment injured and bloody on wet pavement. You need to get up; and still, despite that realization, you lay there and watch as the clouds roll by and cover the patches of blue. You don’t know what time it is, but you do know that there’s a chance that Steven may knock on your apartment door or call your phone if the bitch hasn’t shut it off yet. He’ll figure something went wrong and he might look for you if you don’t head over for dinner. A selfish part of you didn’t want him to find you bleeding out in an alley and save you from whatever potential internal bleeding you have. Not because it would cause him trauma and self blame for not looking for you sooner; But because, you hope that you will die in this alley due to everything you lost.

Your old life was on that phone. You lost the memories of the life you had before you were blipped. You lost the pictures and videos of your parents and friends; of homecoming dance pictures, trips to Coney Island, and bookstores. You lost the audio of you and your best friend laughing together over some dumb joke and how both of your eyes shined in the video with wrinkled corners and wide smiles. You lost the video of your mother and father speaking your name as they urged you to cut the video and to set it up to a timer for a photo instead. You will never get to look back on how they sounded and spoke your name with love and affection. Your parents lay six feet underground in the same Earth that you walk on every day; and you laying in your own pool of blood was the closest that you have ever been to them since. 

Everything was gone simply because a man chose you as his victim and you couldn’t defend yourself well. You don’t notice that it began to rain until you felt the first few drops land on your face. You need to get up and go take care of your injuries so Steven and Marc won’t find you dead in an alley. They will blame themselves for your death and you know that they will also do so for how beaten up you are. You need to get up and you don’t want to. You want to die. You want to give up and go to whatever or wherever it is that you’ll go to after you pass. You want to just call it quits and leave this Earth or roam this planet like a ghost. You just don’t want to exist anymore. 

Everything about existence hurts. You hurt; and it’s more than just the physical pain that you were currently going through. You have wounds that you have yet to heal after years of neglect. You want to die. You want to die. You want to die. You want to die, but you still painstakingly push yourself up into a sitting position. 

Your sides scream in protest and your breath gets caught in your throat. The buildings around you sway as if you were on a boat and blood mixed with rain ran down your forehead and made you close your right eye to prevent any blinding you. Your palms are wet and sticky with blood, your jeans and shirt cling to your skin with the liquid of the body fluid and rain. Saying that you are uncomfortable would be an understatement. You slowly inhale a breath of air through your mouth, the taste of metal was gross on your tongue. Your sides expands slowly and you only hiss out in pain when a shock floods your torso. You bend forward a bit, the movement causing you to cry out and clutch your bruising side as you squeeze your eyes shut. 

Dying is an easy choice, getting up is going to be a bitch. A mumble of string together curse words leaves your lips as you wait for the pain to die out enough that you could focus on opening your eyes and taking in how bad your injuries are. You sure as hell felt like your ribs on your left side were cracked and perhaps broken. You had to have a concussion and the blood loss was making you woozy. The cut on your hands and cheek probably had to have some form of infection beginning to fester in the wounds from the dirty ground; and they definitely will get infected if you don’t clean them properly in a couple of hours. Slowly, you open your eyes and tilt your head down to your damp shirt. You carefully pull back your shirt from your torso and lift it enough just see some of the damage below your belly button on your side. 

Blood and rain ran down the visible patch of your torso as you stared at the darkening of your skin, it was slowly turning purple and black. You lower your shirt, you don’t need to raise it up any higher to know that it was matching the bit that you saw. You glance at your right hand, your knuckles are a little swollen and the sight of it makes you a tad bit more numb inside. You did fight back, you did punch him, it just wasn’t enough. You look away from it and to the entrance of the alley way, cars pass with their windshield wipers sliding back and forth across the glass. The windows were rolled up and people were tucked warmly inside with the heater blasting on high. You wonder if anyone saw you knocked out in an alley and thought that you were just a knocked over trash bag with your work uniform being a black shirt and black pants. Did they not notice? Were they too busy paying attention to the road or listening to whatever was happening on the radio? Or did they see you and just not care to check on you? 

There were a lot of people like that in New York. Some of the people who were homeless were often doing drugs or drinking their problems away with alcohol. There were several stories of people pushing others onto the subway tracks when the train was visible and about to make its stop. New York was not kind and maybe you thought London would more likely be kind enough to check on a person who was injured. You don’t know if you're grateful or not that nobody seemed to notice you. Your gaze trails to the ground in front of you. There lay the damp and shredded pieces of paper of the Eye of Horus, the ink was running from the rain and your blood; and not far from it was the wet plastic bag you carried it in and the orange lanyard that holds your keys. You bend forward, reaching for the plastic baggy and crying in pain and despair as your fingers wrap around it. 

Carefully, you pick up the pieces of paper, most of it falls apart as you pinch the parchment between your fingers and place it into the baggy. You don’t know if the liquid running down your cheeks was the rain, tears, or your blood, but either way you try to collect and save as much as the paper as you could, just so one less thing could get taken away from you. Sobs begin to build up in your chest and you try to hold them in as you focus on picking up the paper Steven gave to you. Your shoulders start to shake as you pick up the final piece and pinch the baggy shut. You hold the bag to your chest as a sob escapes you and soon another one follows. You try to hold in your cries but all that causes is more pain in your body. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fucking fair. Why does this bullshit happen to you? 

A choked out sob leaves you and just like that, the water-gates were open and you were completely crying. Nothing was fair, why do you have to have a shitty week? Why did you have to be the one chosen to be this asshole's victim? Why did your parents have to die and why weren’t you in their shoes? You let everything out in your cries and sharp pains of breath. You just wanted a damn nap and you sure as hell got one because you went unconscious for who-knows-how-long. Everything hurts and sucks and here you are: crying in an alley during a rain storm while shivering and drenched in blood and rain water. This was a terrible Tuesday, the worst one you think you ever had. By the time that you calm down enough to think rather than to feel, the rain seemed to become heavier and you were sure that you were getting hyperthermia. You were cold, especially your hands and nose. Your teeth clatter together and your face aches. You need to get up. You let the emotional numbness take over, you feel drained and exhausted.

With the state that you’re in, you’re going to need support on getting up, there is no way that you would be able to push yourself off of the ground without help. You look around the alley, trying to focus enough that you could clearly see your surroundings through the rocking of the world. There wasn’t anything but trash cans and bags of garbage that you could use. Through your hazy thoughts, you consider that you could knock them over and injure yourself more if you did try to use them. Your eyes trail away from the bins and to the brick wall next to you. There was about an inch between each brick that you could use as a ledge to help pull yourself up. It might damage your fingers some but it’s your only chance to get up. You didn’t move to London after committing fraud, get scared by a deity multiple times, and have a knife held to your throat twice just to die in an alley.

You stuff the plastic baggy into your jean pockets and scoop up your lanyard off of the ground and place it into your other front pocket. You cry out as you rotate your body so you’re on your hands and knees before crawling slowly over to the wall. Your body screams as you lift your upper body and grasp the wall with your hands. It took what felt like forever to stand and lean against the brick to help stabilize yourself. The world seems to spin faster as you’re standing and you close your eyes and try to calmly take a breath and do some breathing exercises. Inhale slowly, try to ignore the sharp fucking pain in your side, hold for five, four, three, two, one; and slowly exhale and repeat. You go through the cycle several times until you feel nauseous. Your stomach churns and you don’t have a chance to hold back your vomit. You throw up directly onto your shoes, almost in the same spot you did all those months ago. The taste of bile was gross and your throat burns a bit from it. You keep your eyes closed as you wait for your stomach to settle. 

You let out a shuddered breath, the smell of vomit, rain, and metal floods your nostrils as you inhale and prepare yourself to continue to fight. Your eyes flutter open and you stand up straight. With every exhausting step you take, you lean your hand against the wall and move; and you keep moving despite the stumbling of your feet and spinning of the environment around you. You keep moving despite your head pounding and the brightness of the world becoming too much for you; and when you fall due to slipping on a mixture of your blood and rain water on the sidewalk's pavement, you get up and continue. You push forward and persevere just like you always have.

—

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[askagamedev]

Why is it that even/especially on mobile, micro-transactions are as expensive as they are? That is, at least the ones I've seen I have to think whether the value is even there. I would have thought that "giving away" obviously great value would get more people to bite. Are big spenders worth that much more than getting more small spenders? Is there some floor where even the cheapest good deal won't entice a new spender?

You might be surprised at how much others are actually willing to pay for things they like. Big spenders do a lot of the heavy lifting, and most choose to spend because they get sufficient positive value (for them) out of the game overall. My cousin's FIFA league is an example of that - all participants are highly-paid professionals who really like soccer, so they all engage without a spending limit because it's fun for them.

For pricing determination, it's something of an optimization issue - we don't want to charge more than most spending players are willing to pay or the value proposition isn't there and they won't buy at all, but we also don't want to charge too much less than most spending players are willing to pay or we're leaving money on the table that the players would be willing to give us. Many sufficiently-large mobile games will feel this out via A/B testing, where they distribute two slightly different versions of the same game and microtransaction offerings to their players and track spending behaviors to see which set of prices do better overall. They will also do this A/B testing to try other potential changes as well - game flow, visual design, level design, etc.

You are quite correct, however - the "regular" microtransaction offerings usually aren't for the budget-minded or newer spenders. Most developers create different microtransaction products aimed at different types of players. Converting non-paying players to small spenders is extremely important to any microtransaction business model. Getting someone to spend the first time is a lot more difficult than getting them to spend the second, fifth, or fiftieth time (especially in a free-to-play environment). For new players, devs usually offer a variety of one-time introductory packages that are more budget-friendly and help with early- and mid- game content more than elder game content. These introductory products ease the transition from non-spending player into spending player.

For regular spending players that are more budget-minded, devs typically offer a different set of options - often more limited quantity time-based "deals". These often aren't the latest and greatest things released, but can provide more value to the player for the price - instead of offering the newest coolest costumes to come out, this month's deal offers a bundle of several older costumes together at a reduced price. The fact that they are better value (if not the latest and greatest) and time-sensitive tends to make the buyers feel better about their limited purchases - they're getting a better deal that isn't always available.

Obviously, those who spend the most will get the most offerings. Not only are they the ones who support the game most financially, they are also the ones who consume the most paid content and demand more. Those who spend less are still valuable, which is why we will still offer them things, but they spend less so they also consume less. New players get special treatment, because new players can bounce off of a game easily and we want to keep as many new players around for as long as we can.

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[thepartyponies]

stream of consciousness post

my new car is great in a lot of ways but it’s… slow

It’s the base model 5-series 2.5L i6 189hp 6500rpm in a ~3600lb car

My other car I usually drive is a Taurus SHO 3.2L V6 220hp 7000rpm, which is just enough to have fun with in a ~3400lb car. A great engine in a mediocre car. Now I have a great car with a mediocre engine.

If I wanted to change that, I’m contemplating two different routes.

Swap in the 3L m54b30 version of the engine from the e39 530 sedan or e46 330, maybe get the 330 zhp engine for a bit more power and revs. that would be fairly affordable and probably replicate the performance of the Taurus, while keeping the straightforward parts compatibility and i6 smoothness, and I could possibly manual swap it at the same time relatively easily.

But that would still only get me 235hp/6800rpm, which would be… enough, but it’d still be slower than it looks, with the M5 front bumper and wheels (still need the back bumper).

The s54 engine from the e46 m3 would be really fun, 3.2L 333hp 8000rpm, or the actual M5’s s62 V8, 4.9L 394hp 7000rpm, but those are really expensive and questionably reliable. The 540’s m62 4.4L V8, 290hp 6000rpm, would also be an option with factory compatibility but it’s got timing chain reliability issues, and isn’t very powerful or efficient for a modern V8, and revs even lower than what I’ve already got.

So then there’s the ford coyote v8, 5L 435/460/480/500hp and 7000/7500rpm depending on the version. Pretty fuel efficient for what it is, and while more expensive than the m54b30 I could probably find one for less than an m3 or m5 engine, and it would have better power, efficiency, and reliability/maintenance friendliness than any of the other options, and more revs than anything but the s54, especially if I go for the gen 3 coyote.

I’m definitely not going to LS swap it, yes that’s the cheapest most powerful option, but a low revving pushrod engine just wouldn’t suit the car.

I’d really like to get one of the ones with the tremec tr3160 transmission, not the mt82. The gt350’s 5.2L 526hp 8250rpm V8 also exists and has that trans, and would be amazing, but might be too expensive and vibrate too much. idk I haven’t driven one to know, but I really like the current i6 smoothness and want to stay as close to that as I can.

Another issue is the rear differential. The only direct swap for the current open diff is the M5’s lsd, and those are expensive and only have one ratio option. What I want to do is put the ford 8.8 irs diff in it, either from an older explorer or cobra etc, or from whatever s550/s650 mustang I get as a donor car. Problem is, the mounts don’t fit. You’d need to modify or replace the rear cover, and weld new front mounts onto the car’s subframe. Doable, I’ve seen it done for the guys who have ls swapped these, but it’s work I don’t currently know how to do. I’d probably have to get a lot of outside help for the whole project, especially the electronics programming and wiring. My friend who sold me the car is a fabricator, which could come in handy.

Then there’s the exhaust. One of the most annoying things about the car. Every e39 5-series has the spare tire and battery on the right side of the of the under-trunk area, which only leaves room for a single exhaust on the left side. The M5 ditched the spare tire to run dual exhaust, which is a lot to give up. All the dual exhaust conversions I’ve seen online either replace the whole rear floor with m5 sheet metal, or are ugly hack jobs. All of them lose the spare tire. I think, if you ran small mufflers, or had the muffler further forward, you could shift the spare tire to the center and sneak a second tailpipe between the tire and battery compartments.

Alternatively, just run the stock axle-back section for quiet mode and have two valved dump pipes in front of the diff. But I really like the aesthetics of the m5 bumper and quad tips, so idk

[tayne-dot-exe]

My recent autism "I need to categorize and list everything" obsession is foods and flavors, but for just my taste and the cheapest/easiest way for me to have it whenever. Long diary post.

Like I need to list out every food I ever want, to remind myself what are all the things I like to eat and what are my options, especially trying to figure out what flavor profiles/foods are most DISTINCT from each other and if there are versions of similar stuff where I would never choose one if another was an option (eg. teriyaki chicken vs braised pork), I've basically come up with a list of things that could pass as a fairly varied restaurant menu, or a buffet catered personally to me. Stuff thats good in the cupboard or freezer indefinitely I already try to keep stocked for myself for any time I feel like which is basically an awesome munchies spread of chips, candy, packaged pastries, and ice cream, but I wish getting cheeses or fun breads didnt have such a time limit or it was easier to get/make just a couple servings of them so I dont have to plan HAVING to finish whole packs/batches of stuff before it gets moldy. But I honestly think if I had the option to star trek materialize any food any time for free I might never really stray from a list like this because while I'm not really afraid of trying new foods, when I do I'm doing it in the pursuit of finding out every possible food I want in my Repertoire. When I go to a new restaurant I usually try to figure out what is the item on the menu that has either the highest combination of flavors I either already know I like or that I can't "INTJ calculate in my head".

I wish I could try more flavors of things to compare 1 on 1 the best version of different things (love adam ragusea or babish vids where they actually do the experiment of if a regular person can appreciate differences in techniques every online recipe just Says is the best way) or even just to Know more things without having to commit to like 10$ blocks of 20 different cheeses I've never had before or even the continuous funky packaged snacks with flavors of the month that might just be made to trick people into trying 1 time and not to actually be good, we need cheese tasting parties but for every kind of food and snack you may not have otherwise organically encountered without having to spend 6$ per package of a ton of things you might not finish. I feel like maybe there was a reddit guy era of having hot sauce tastings? I feel like bbq sauces also have so much variety that you could do something like that, I'm a big sauce fan.

For most of these things I think I have pretty basic and cheap taste and don't have the palette to care about differences of fancier cooking techniques or subtle flavor differences or the best mouthfeel combination of chocolate and caramel. And to some degree theres only so many foods that bring entirely distinct and strong flavor components out there, especially since the flavors you're predisposed to liking are somewhat limited by whats familiar to you, but sometimes I'm like what if there are flavors out there I could never "INTJ calculate in my head" and have no idea I need to try in the right context to know this (like how guys will specialize in how to mentally approach tasting what kind of coffee you like). Or worse what if theres something I would love so much but could never find locally, I am so use to abundance and having the same access to things all year that this would be like a faerie food curse to me (not really, tbh stuff being even just a little more expensive than things that are easy to make and stock usually deters me anyway but "I have the OPTION to spend 30$ to have. idk lobster in the middle of Texas even though I'm not willing to spend that much hardly ever" feels different than "what if my potential favorite fruit in the whole world is not sold in any grocery store in america").

Anyway you know that post about what chicago guys put on their hot dogs. I feel like out of just my list of very flavorful INGREDIENCE I get excited when its on any thing at a restaurant, I could mix together a bunch of vegetables and condiments that maybe could be called a "salad" that I can just put on any combination of carbs or protein like "you know what every single sandwich is missing? 3 types of cheese, 4 types of pickled vegetables, sun dried tomatoes, avocado, green onions…." Like I want to see just how many strong flavors I can put together while still actually tasting most of them individually. If they overpower each other then I will not know where to cut back because maybe I just want to know that everything I like is all together and I am having it.

[rosesradio]

i'm struggling with what i wanna do in grad school...

and i was just gonna tag rant but yk what i'll put it in the post

i'm in my senior year of my bachelor's program in information systems (business + computer science = where dreams go to die) because apparently the degree will be useful for the next year or two until the inevitable AI takeover (itsfineitsfineitsfine)

i always thought i would go into grad school for library science and be a librarian, but the farther along i get in school, the more my options look...bleak. i've applied to my local library maybe half a dozen times and got one interview that i thought went well, though they didn't hire me (i think they had someone else in mind already). most people in the field say it took years of volunteer work, networking, and endless credits just to get their foot in the door. although my research says the field is not dying (it's just highly competitive), it feels like i would be screwing myself over if i got this degree.

really, i just want a job associated with fiction, something fun. i would be happy working in a library, managing the system & organizing events & talking about books with students. i would be happy being a creative writing teacher. I would be happy working in publishing, maybe reading over manuscripts or editing. i'd even be happy working on a movie set, if that's in writing or something else to bring a fictional world to life.

i have to decide something quick, because i graduate in may. i wanted to get my master's at the cheapest online school [redacted]. i thought i could maybe do a dual degree program for library science and english teaching or something. my parents want me to use my college money (both through them and my acedemic scholarships), to go to a different school [redacted], that costs twice as much for the same online degree because the reputation is better and it might lead to better networking opportunities.

my worry is just that no matter how many credits i need, i will always be short something. i'll have to go back to school for education or something else. and this isn't a situation where i get the job and they pay for me to go back to school--it would be like they don't hire me, and i have to pay to go back to school anyways because i won't have a chance at even getting another job interview otherwise.

i just don't know what to do, and i'm scared. i'm wondering what degree to do, what route to take that won't just make me happy, but will also get me a job at the end of the day. i keep seeing all these things about unemployment, the housing market, the job market, how hard everything is and i feel like i'm speeding until i crash into a wall. i haven't done any internships, all of my job experience is in food and retail and i'm terrified that's where i'm gonna stay for the rest of my life (no offense to anyone working those jobs, obv from this post you can tell it's virtually impossible to work anywhere else so like i get it).

i know i need to do my research and email the different schools and figure things out, it's just a really hard situation to work through.

if anyone has any advice or take on this situation at all, i would really appreciate it. i just feel really lost

[myramillan]

There is a suggestion to kill it before it begins to lay eggs

Botting isn't without its benefits and drawbacks for the entire Runescape community, every decent player should be wary of any temptation to use these scam bots. Botters are often defended by those who claim that it's a non-victimless crime, OSRS gold or one that must be taken care of to protect the community. And without these bots, there'd be far fewer items available to purchase in the Grand Exchange and they would cost... far more.

This may seem harsh, but it is true. However it's not so bad as you think. If genuine hardworking players need be willing to shell out more money for things they need but they also have the option of selling items they have put efforts into farming to the same cost due to a lower availability and more demand. It's as simple as that. Economics isn't that difficult to grasp, especially when you're engaging in blogs such as this one.

At the final, this will make sense to even out or to the benefit of fair players. If this isn't sufficient for you then keep in mind that bots can also be used to improve the game's skills. It's the biggest disappointment from a player's standpoint, considering the difficulty of the game when a person who truly is in love with RuneScape playing for time playing observes another character sporting the same or even superior equipment interacting with machines. It is easy to spot an automated game.

There is a suggestion to kill it before it begins to lay eggs. After spotting their initial bots, the user begins to see them all over the place. It's like something you'd see in the "6th Sense" film. In the end, his enthusiasm for the game gets to a new low. You then ask yourself: why do I want to take part when I could operate a bot, and perform something other than play? In the beginning, the player does not want to run a play bot. He attempts to remain in a fair manner, and tries to remain engaged and uses his disappointment to motivate him to put in more effort.

After a few minutes, but then the reality sets in the botter gives up, and another botter is born on the earth. Ladies and gentlemen, the cycle continues. Botting is a major issue and must be addressed ASAP. Botting is a method of gaining financial gain, it's utilized to automatize repetitive work, it can be used to make progress without putting on the job first.

Anything you can do yourself. If you're feeling stuck or frustrated about it, you can buy OSRS Gold and make it easy to complete. In the end, botting eliminates the fun that the game might provide. Gaming is about stepping into an entirely different world from ours and working hard to make it happen. This sly method is on the contrary and needs to be stopped. Do not be like that dear Runescapers.If you've become an expert in flipping the Gielinor and you noticed that it takes quite a bit of time to purchase and sell products, assess their worth, overcome concurrence and the list goes on. To counter this the players begin to practice another useful techniques like inactive flipping. Once you're proficient at it then there's just a single step to take to the next level on the Grand Exchange journey - investing. While it's possible to invest in the long run, investing for short-term time frames can yield the same results. The point is, does anyone not wish to make money on RS gold as soon as is possible?

If you're looking to purchase and sell things with reasonable profits as quickly as you can while flipping investing is a completely different, especially when it comes to the time consumed. It is always advisable to be looking for ways to spend less, but reap more benefits. If you decide to invest in short-term, you should look at ways to earn dividends in the space of about 48 hours. Of course, it is possible to continue to hold on to those things for a longer period of time, cheapest OSRS gold however you must always have an argument to justify that, which is built on a certain amount of expertise and knowledge.

[lostplay]

Game 9: Samurai Shodown II (Jan 2023)

Samurai Shodown II really does have some great upgrades compared to the first game; more detailed backgrounds, extra characters, and even a new super attack to help even the playing ground. The main problem with this game though is just how under cooked it's fighting system is. Just ideas or concepts that are just not fully fleshed out yet remain interesting.

The single player campaign still remains an oddity as not only is the story a mess, but the pacing still feels off too. There just isn't much explanation or dialogue to it, and while I understand that part of that is because of the time of release; Shodown II also boosts some rather interesting cutscenes shared with the majority of the cast that just feels confusing. It's almost like they snuck these scenes in there to say "Look what we did" without any proper acknowledge of what they were actually doing with the story. Adding some extra dialogue or even a proper opening cutscene would have been more than enough to make an interesting campaign, but the game just doesn't bother with it. On top of that, the game still has you go through way too many fights for a single arcade run. Not only are these runs brutally hard on lower difficulties, but too exhausting to think to go through it again. The final boss, Mizuki, is also a complete terror in her own right that could very easily kill any run that gets to her too. While I understand fighting game bosses are always going to be some of the hardest, cheapest bosses to fight, Mizuki really does push the limits of making a player play a perfect game that just makes her not fun.

As mentioned before, the combat did get improved a bit with some new additions to the system, but they really just aren't good enough. It's really neat to have a super move that breaks your opponent's weapon, but the fact that it's available for a limited time makes it so unreliable to use in actual combat. Additionally, some of the stages have some extra props or breakables in them that seem fun at first, but can get aggravating when these said features start benefiting your opponent and not you, making for some rather weird one sided shenanigans or spacing issues. Sadly, fighting in this game still feels slow and unbalanced. Some characters really just feel like they have a better kit or movement options while others feel rather locked on to only one approachable way to their opponents.

It really feels like it almost got the formula right, but Samurai Shodown II just feels like a lackluster sequel to a lackluster game. Almost all the parts are there to make a fairly interesting fighting game series. Interesting character design, great sprite work, wonderful backgrounds, but it just falls short on the fundamentals to really bring the game home. I don't think this is as bad as Samurai Shodown, but it's not really much better either.

[aquila-non-capit-muscus]

Nemo Sine Vitio Est!

Do you even know me at all?

Why do you assume that the problem is I just don’t know how to handle my vices? Sorry… spoiler alert: this isn’t my first rodeo. Actually I would like everyone who is in charge of my judgement to stand up. Now, a type who has never smoked amphetamines please sit the fuck down and shut your overly assumptive mouths. Who are you to stand over another in superiority touting hearsay as your gospel? I personally took the time in my younger years to experiment with all sorts of mind expanding poisons so I knew what I was signing up for when I signed on to my current crutch. (Which I selected because it checked the boxes for what i required and nobody else was offering any help). I was working two jobs after having lost my job of 7 years, going through a divorce with a shitty lawyer who charged $5000 to offer bad advice and then acquit himself, got struck by lightning, was teetering on the edge of financial ruin, had a suicidal girlfriend, got hit by a car, started getting kidney stones, was trying to keep my kids happy with limited visitation before two of three divorced me also, my car broke down, contracted a fungal infection, broke a rib, and my ex-wife thought it would be more fun if I had scabies also, so I was constantly exhausted, nauseous, and couldn’t sleep because of stress. Doctors said there was nothing wrong, but since I desired survival… I gave up drinking and chose the cheapest option for what could keep me going. Actually cheaper than what I spent when I was just drinking. So, if you have no experience, what are you basing your decisions off of… praytell, a Google search, a PTA sign-up sheet, PBS, Clinical Western Psyciatric Medicine, please… if you think I cannot maintain my vices, I have been doin so in a variable rotation going on pretty much 30+ years now. I think I know what I am doing.

If you think I have some deviated sexual outlooks, did you know that I first had sex when I was around. 8 yrs. old? Yes that was when I first came in someone’s mouth… first hers and then later his. I had my dick in a pussy around that age too, but I was too young to know what to do, and I don’t remember if I came. But I didn’t get to put it in an ass for another year or so later. And yes, I do not see any problem with masturbation. I started when I was 12, and have gone strong since.

I have come so close to dying so many times that I’ve lost count. But I have never feared dying. When I was a wee young lad I used to have nightmares/dreams at least once a week where I would die or get murdered in the dream. So I guess I kind of got used to the idea.

Any other questions? I have a lot of stories that some of you have never heard (A2a, maybe even 1 or 2 for you, and N5h, if I forget any would you please fill in the rest of the details as you might be the only one who knows them all? ).

[aceaviatrix]

so fun fact: i’m gonna be a bridesmaid in my brother’s wedding! which is genuinely exciting!!

but i’ve never done this before, the closest i have is watching my partner be a bridesmaid in her sibling’s wedding. and i’m all kinds of anxious about it, mostly because money.

the bridal groupchat was launched this morning, so now i know there’s 6 total bridesmaids. i know the bride (obviously) and i met one of the others at the proposal. it has now been announced that the bachelorette (?) weekend will be in nashville and the theme will be “last hoe standing”.

i’m! anxious! and scared!!

first, because of the cost of travel. the shortest travel time is flying (obviously), i can fly direct for something like $300 roundtrip, 2hrs each way. the cheapest would be to drive (only paying for gas), estimated about $140, but it would be 11hrs driving. that’s also the second shortest trip.

there are no direct trains, amtrak routes me all the way south to birmingham and then north to nashville on some smaller line, and also that would be $400 ish round trip and take 30hrs each way as a result. greyhound is also very roundabout in route, takes 20hrs each way, and is about $200 total. there are  no other options, other than which specific airline i want...

so do i want to get there quickly for a bit more money? or do i want to save money on travel and get there exhausted from driving 11hrs?

also! i’m not a big fan of getting super drunk! i’ll drink a few, but 3 is kind of my max before i’m not having fun anymore. not knowing any of the other girls, i don’t know how much pressure i’m gonna be under. i don’t think the bride would pressure me, but i also don’t know anything about what this trip will include.

i! hate! uncertainty! i need to plan out things, or at least know what my options are in general, and also i’m afraid i’m the poorest of the group and am scared about how much everything will cost. i can ask the bride for more details outside the groupchat, now that i have her number.